The brown garment was made after a fashion of many years ago—the sleeves and body tight and skimpy and narrow-chested; the skirt unnecessarily full and heavy.
"I think you're rather like Mrs. Noah," said Edmund, "only you've more hair and petticoats."
Jane-Anne dropped her arms, stooped, and picked up the boots. "Aren't they frightful?" she said. "That's the asylum. We all have to wear them." Whereupon she cast the boots violently away from her and they bounded into the midst of a herbaceous border.
"Now," she said, with a little dancing movement indicative of relief, "you'll see that I can run."
"What was that you said about an asylum?" Edmund asked suspiciously. "I thought only mad people went to asylums."
"It's the Bainbridge Asylum for female orphans," Jane-Anne explained. "I'm female and I'm an orphan, and I wish I wasn't. I'm at school there and I hate it. But I'm generally ill, so I have to go to the hospital, and there it's lovelly."
"Why are you ill?" asked Edmund.
"It's so cold. If I go on being ill any more," she added hopefully, "they won't keep me. It's because I'm an orphan I have to go—it makes it easier for aunt."
"But we're orphans too and we don't go to asylums," Edmund objected.
"Ah," said Jane-Anne, "you're rich, you see."