stery
that she, incomprehensibly, was mixed up with. As long as she could
remember, her delicate, childish soul had quivered with the vibration of
their incomprehensible and tiresome passions. You could never tell what
any of them really wanted, though among them they managed to create an
atmosphere of most devastating want. Only one thing she knew
definitely--that they didn't want _her_.

She was altogether out of it except as a meaningless counter in their
incomprehensible, grown-up game. Her father didn't want her; her mother
didn't want her very much; and though now and then Ferdie (who wasn't
any relation at all) behaved as if he wanted her, _his_ wanting only
made the other two want her less than ever.

There had been no peace or quietness or security in her little life of
eleven years. Their places (and they had had so many of them!) had never
had any proper place for her. She seemed to have spent most of her time
in being turned out of one room because her father had come into it, and
out of another because her mother wanted to be alone in it with Ferdie.
And nobody, except Ferdie sometimes, when they let him, ever wanted to
be alone in any room with her. She was so tired of the rooms where she
was obliged to be always alone with herself or with the servants, though
the servants were always kind.

Now, in Uncle Anthony's house, there was always peace and quietness and
an immense security. She knew that, having taken her, they wouldn't
give her up.

She was utterly happy.

And the house, with its long, wainscoted rooms, its whiteness and
darkness, with its gay, clean, shining chintzes, the delicate, faded
rose stuffs, the deep blue and purple and green stuffs, and the blue and
white of the old china, and its furniture of curious woods, the golden,
the golden-brown, the black and the wine-coloured, bought by Anthony in
many countries, the round concave mirrors, the pictures and the old
bronzes, all the things that he had gathered together and laid up as
treasure for his Sons; and the garden on the promontory, with its
buttressed walls and its green lawn, its flower borders, and its tree of
Heaven, saturated with memories, became for her, as they had become for
Frances, the sanctuary, crowded with visible and tangible symbols, of
the Happiness she adored.

"Sing it again, Ronny."

She sang it again.

"'London Bridge is broken down'"--

It was funny of Michael to like the silly, childish song; but i