“I found something,” repeated little Anne, “when I was looking for you. It was on the floor, upstairs in the hall. I went upstairs and I called you, but of course you didn’t hear out in the garden. I picked it up.”
Little Anne produced from the pocket in her skirt, of which she was inordinately proud, a sheet of paper, folded small. She spread it out on her knee and carefully smoothed it; Anne saw that it was an ordinary sheet of letter paper, unruled, covered with Richard Latham’s microscopic characters, running together in places, straggling apart in others, lines of irregular length, verses.
Anne hesitated a moment; she probably had already copied these verses, dictated to her by Richard. They could not be anything that he did not wish her to see. If it had been something in prose form she would not have looked at it, fearing it might be a letter not intended for her eyes, but verses written by him belonged to her official care.
“May I see, little Anne?” she asked, and took the paper.
She knew at once that these were not verses that she had ever copied. She read them with difficulty in deciphering them, with greater difficulty in controlling the terror, actual terror, which they inspired in her.
FOR ANNE
“There is a song I must not sing
Which sings itself the livelong day;
There is a plea I must not bring
Which ev’ry breath I draw must pray;