Read The Annam Jewel for Free Online

penny on the counter.
    The woman sniffed.
    â€œI don’t ’old with hinstitutions myself,” she said.
    â€œWhy?” asked Peter.
    â€œNone of your imperence.”
    A young man had come into the shop, and her manner to Peter suddenly became very short.
    Peter emerged into the street, asked his way once or twice again, and presently found himself on a road that ran steadily uphill. At first there were houses on either side. They began as villas, and ended as straggly cottages with daffodils coming up between gooseberry and currant bushes in the front gardens. Peter noticed that the cottages seemed to have more flowers than the villas; he wondered why.
    When he came to St. Gunburga’s he agreed with the woman in the shop. You couldn’t miss it, you couldn’t possibly miss it. It was very large, very square, and it had a great many windows. None of the windows had any curtains, which gave them a hard staring look. The walls were built of the bright, yellowish red brick which always looks as if it had just been scraped. There was not the least scrap of ivy, or moss, or any growing thing upon the brick. The house was surrounded by about an acre of asphalt, and the acre of asphalt was bounded by a high, grey stone wall with plenty of broken glass on the top of it. In the middle of the wall facing the road there was a tall gate of wrought iron, with the words “St. Gunburga’s” across the top of it in hard, gilt letters. There was no grass. There were no flowers. There were no trees.
    Peter had a practical soul. He hated St. Gunburga’s with a deep, cold hatred, but he did not waste any time in thinking about it. He walked on up the road, and presently climbed a fence, cut back across a field, and began to skirt the grey stone wall which lay between him and Rose Ellen.
    St. Gunburga’s had been planted on an upland slope amongst fields. They were perfectly good fields, with the normal amount of grass and hedgerows with ivy and docks and celandine growing in them. There were a few elm trees, quite green; willows with withered catkins; and some very prickly hawthorns, well on in leaf.
    Peter made his way to the end of the wall. He could hear voices on the other side of it. He turned the corner and stood still, listening.
    The wall rose on his right to a height of between seven and eight feet. On his left was a ditch, and beyond the ditch a hedgerow with a few trees standing up above it. Between the ditch and the wall there was a sort of alleyway, nine or ten feet across, where the grass grew rank.
    Peter looked at the wall and then at the trees. The farther ones were scraggy wrecks pollarded almost out of recognition, but the one nearest to the corner of the wall was still recognizable as an elm. It ran up to a good height, the trunk densely wreathed with ivy. Some branches stretched backwards over a field beyond the hedgerow, but all the boughs on the side towards St. Gunburga’s had been lopped. Some of them lay overgrown with moss in the alleyway and the ditch. Great pendant masses of ivy covered the shortened stumps which remained upon the tree.
    Peter climbed over the hedge, got to the farther side of the trunk, and swarmed up it. About twelve feet up he worked his way round the trunk, and found the end of a branch upon which he could sit astride. The ivy from another branch immediately overhead hung down between him and St. Gunburga’s like a curtain. He worked himself a little farther along, parted the ivy, and looked over on to the asphalt playground.
    Some of the girls were playing tag, some of them walking about, some standing in groups. Two of the staff were walking up and down at the far end.
    All the girls were dressed alike. They wore frocks of brown serge, made with straight, tight bodices, and full, bunchy skirts which came down to their ankles. They had grey lisle stockings, and clumping black shoes. On their heads they wore small sailor hats with a dull