No, thanks, she could not; only, did she
know where Mr. Freeland's room was?

"Which Mr. Freeland, miss, the young or the old?"

"Oh, the old!" Having said which, Nedda felt unhappy; her Dad was not
old! "No, miss; but I'll find out. It'll be in the walnut wing!" But
with a little flutter at the thought of thus setting people to run about
wings, Nedda murmured: "Oh! thanks, no; it doesn't matter."

She settled down now on the cushion of the window-seat, to look out and
take it all in, right away to that line of hills gone blue in the haze of
the warm evening. That would be Malvern; and there, farther to the
south, the 'Tods' lived. 'Joyfields!' A pretty name! And it was lovely
country all round; green and peaceful, with its white, timbered houses
and cottages. People must be very happy, living here--happy and quiet
like the stars and the birds; not like the crowds in London thronging
streets and shops and Hampstead Heath; not like the people in all those
disgruntled suburbs that led out for miles where London ought to have
stopped but had not; not like the thousands and thousands of those poor
creatures in Bethnal Green, where her slum work lay. The natives here
must surely be happy. Only, were there any natives? She had not seen
any. Away to the right below her window were the first trees of the
fruit garden; for many of them Spring was over, but the apple-trees had
just come into blossom, and the low sun shining through a gap in some far
elms was slanting on their creamy pink, christening them--Nedda
thought--with drops of light; and lovely the blackbirds' singing sounded
in the perfect hush! How wonderful to be a bird, going where you would,
and from high up in the air seeing everything; flying down a sunbeam,
drinking a raindrop, sitting on the very top of a tall tree, running in
grass so high that you were hidden, laying little perfect blue-green
eggs, or pure-gray speckly ones; never changing your dress, yet always
beautiful. Surely the spirit of the world was in the birds and the
clouds, roaming, floating, and in the flowers and trees that never
smelled anything but sweet, never looked anything but lovely, and were
never restless. Why was one restless, wanting things that did not
come--wanting to feel and know, wanting to love, and be loved? And at
that thought which had come to her so unexpectedly--a thought never
before shaped so definitely--Nedda planted her arms on the window-sill,
with slee