Читать книгу Revisiting the Earth - James Langdon Hill - Страница 22

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The flood gates of memory opened wide as the lamented Queen of England, with the weight of eighty years resting upon her, was wheeled in her chair, from room to room in the old fashioned brick palace at Kensington. Here in this unpretentious princely abode with its beautiful name, she was born, and here when she was waked very early out of heavy sleep to be hailed, Queen, she said prettily, "I will be good."

She kept her word. Here remain, as she left them her doll's house, the miniature counter where she sold ribbons and laces to imaginary customers, the doll's linen, marked with her own childish cross-stitch and the furniture and mementoes which cause the plain, irregular, rather homely structure to be hallowed as the shrine of Victoria. Here she saw her little set of cooking utensils, her child's scrapbook and little boxes of paints with camel's hair brushes. She lingered lovingly over these objects, which once meant so much to her, and as the vivid association and tender suggestiveness of her surroundings touched her feelings, in the presence of a group of dolls, being amid her toys, she desired the attendants who accompanied her to withdraw, expressing the desire, in that sacred place, to be alone.