Christina and the boys

Christina's eyes were big with horror as she clasped her tiny hands round her knees, and stared into the fire in front of her.

She was in her father's library: a large dimly-lighted room with books lining the shelves on the walls from top to bottom. It was an afternoon in early autumn; the last rays of the setting sun were stealing in through a stained glass window and colouring the dingy writing-table with red and blue patches. It was a silent, unused room; but it seemed as if it wanted wise spectacled scholars in it, and not a small pale-faced child in a short frock and white frilled pinafore.

Yet she looked as if she were quite at home there, and indeed she was. The library was her ideal of bliss.

Christina's father had been abroad since her mother's death, which took place when she was born. She had been brought up entirely by her old nurse, and though Bracken Towers held innumerable rooms of every sort and size, Christina had been limited to her two nurseries. She lived in them entirely and it was only during the last year that she had made acquaintance with the library.

Mrs. Hallam, the housekeeper, had always seemed to Christina to be the real owner of the house. She was a tall, severe-looking woman, with sharp eyes, and a still sharper tongue. Nurse was the only privileged person who drank tea with her in her private sitting-room. Christina was never allowed in there. Mrs. Hallam made no secret of her dislike to children.