Abandoned, the girl stood in the middle of the room, so far more ‘simple’ than she had ever slept in, with its warm fragrance of rose-leaves and verbena, its Aubusson carpet, white silk-quilted bed, sofa, cushioned window-seat, dainty curtains, and little nickel box of biscuits on little spindly table.  There she stood and sniffed, stretched herself, and thought:  ‘It’s jolly—­only, it smells too much!’ and she went up to the pictures, one by one.  They seemed to go splendidly with the room, and suddenly she felt homesick.  Ridiculous, of course!  Yet, if she had known where her father’s room was, she would have run out to it; but her memory was too tangled up with stairs and corridors—­to find her way down to the hall again was all she could have done.

A maid came in now with a blue silk gown very thick and soft.  Could she do anything for Miss Freeland?  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