e flowers yelled at one another like so many
screeching parrots. In the corners of the room rose dusty Makart
bouquets, which decorated those same corners year in, year out.

Marietje played her scales in the drawing-room, while the wind howled
down the chimney, which smelt of soot after the winter fires.
Conscientiously Marietje played her scales with her stubborn little
fingers, constantly making the same mistake, which she did not hear and
therefore did not correct, thinking that it was right as it was. Now and
then, she looked up through the window: "Poor trees!" thought Marietje.
"Poor leaves! See how the wind's killing them; and they're hardly open
yet!..."

She played on, conscientiously, but she dearly wished that she could
make the wind stop, to save the leaves, the young chestnut-leaves. She
remembered, it was just the same thing last spring. The spring before
that, it was the same too. And then, when the chestnut-leaves were at
last able to unfurl themselves, in a quiet, windless moment, then they
were scorched and shrivelled for the whole summer, for their whole leafy
lives. Poor trees! Poor leaves!...

The stubborn fingers went on conscientiously, tapping out the scales and
constantly playing that same wrong note with almost comical persistency:
ting! The front-door bell was constantly going ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling!
All those noises--the wind: whew, boo! The scales: ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta,
ta-ta; ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta, ta-ta. The front-door bell: ting-a-ling,
ting-a-ling! The barrel-organs in the street, two going at the same
time. The colours indoors: the colours of the wall-paper and curtains
and carpet, screeching like parrots. The cries of the costermongers
outside: "Strawberrees!... Fine strawberrees!" The rattle of the
greengrocers' carts, clattering over the noisy cobble-stones--all these
noises rang out together and it was as though the wind defined and
accentuated each individual sound, blowing away a mist from each sound,
leaving only the rough, resonant kernel of each sound to ring out
against the glittering plate-glass windows, along the goutily-creaking
flagstaffs, into this room, where the parrot-colours jabbered aloud....

It blew and rang and screeched and jabbered; and the girl with her
continual false note--ting!--heard none of it, but thought only, "Oh,
those poor trees! Oh, those poor leaves!" in her gentle little,
hypersensitive soul. Used as she was to the wind, the noises and the
colo