CHAPTER III.
ANGELINA I Angelina Braid, on the morning of her third birthday, woke very early.
It would be too much to say that she knew it was her birthday, but she awoke, excited.

She looked at the glimmering room, heard the sparrows beyond her windows, heard the snoring of her nurse in the large bed opposite her own, and lay very still, with her heart thumping like anything.

She made no noise, however, because it was not her way to make a noise.

Angelina Braid was the quietest little girl in all the Square.
"You'd never meet one nigher a mouse in a week of Sundays," said her nurse, who was a "gay one" and liked life.
It was not, however, entirely Angelina's fault that she took life quietly; in 21 March Square, it was exceedingly difficult to do anything else.

Angelina's parents were in India, and she was not conscious, very acutely, of their existence.