"Nothing."
"Nothing? And what are you looking at?"
"Nothing, Mamma."
"Then go upstairs and take your things off. Quick!"
She went very slowly, holding herself with care, lest she should jar her
happiness and spill it.
One of the windows of her room was open. She stood a little while looking
out.
Beyond the rose-red wall of the garden she saw the flat furrowed field,
stripes of grey earth and vivid green. In the middle of the field the
five elms in a row, high and slender; four standing close together, one
apart. Each held up a small rounded top, fine as a tuft of feathers.
On her left towards Ilford, a very long row of high elms screened off the
bare flats from the village. Where it ended she saw Drake's Farm; black
timbered barns and sallow haystacks beside a clump of trees. Behind the
five elms, on the edge of the earth, a flying line of trees set wide
apart, small, thin trees, flying away low down under the sky.
She looked and looked. Her happiness mixed itself up with the queer light
and with the flat fields and the tall, bare trees.
She turned from the window and saw the vases that Mamma had given her
standing on the chimney-piece. The black birds with red beaks and red
legs looked at her. She threw herself on the bed and pressed her face
into the pillow and cried "Mamma! Mamma!"