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209 Words
4And meanwhile Fran slept. Her room was in the corner tower, facing the east and next to the nursery, and when she woke up in the morning the sunlight was pouring in like a great flood, making her blink her dark brown eyes bewilderedly as she gazed round on the unfamiliar scene. Then Miss Grimshaw, Michael’s governess, came in to dress her and administer a preliminary glass of hot milk. And as Fran took the glass into her hands Miss Grimshaw exclaimed, in a voice like the bark of a very small dog: “What do you say?”
Fran, tired and astonished in the presence of so much concentrated strangeness, stared dumbly. “Come, come,” reiterated Miss Grimshaw, barking more shrilly,—“WHAT DO YOU SAY?” And Fran, after profound and exhaustive self-examination, replied, softly: “I say what I like.”
Not till the dressing and admonitions were over was she permitted to stand by the sun-bathed window and look down. Then at last she saw the meadows as she would never afterwards forget them—rolling uphill and downhill into the farthest distance, spattered with daisies and buttercups, and mightily ablaze with the sunlight of a perfect June morning.
CHAPTER ONE MICHAEL
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