Free Loving, Living, Party Going by Henry Green

motionless asleep and the other intent and quiet behind a division. Then dropping everything they turned, they also fled.
     
    Miss Swift was deaf and could not always hear her charges' words as along with Evelyn and Moira and Mrs Welch's Albert she came that afternoon to the dovecote round by the back. She groaned while she settled herself in the shady seat and the doves rose in a white cloud on softly clapping wings.
    'What's troublin' 'er?' Albert asked.
    'It's only nanny's rheumatism,' Miss Moira quoted.
    'Why come to that I got an uncle 'as 'is joints boiled Tuesdays and Thursdays over at St Luke's down the old Bow Road.'
    'Now shall poor old nanny tell you a story of the two white doves that didn't agree?'
    Moira nudged Evelyn and pointed. A pair of these birds on a ledge were bowing beak to beak. The two girls copied them, nodding deeply one to the other as they sat on either side of Miss Swift. This woman rubbed a knee with both hands without looking at it. She had closed her eyes.
    'Once upon a time there were six little doves lived in a nest,' she began and Raunce came out of an unused door in that Castle wall. The rusted hinges creaked. The two girls waved but Mrs Welch's Albert beyond Evelyn might almost have been said to cringe. Raunce put a finger to his lips. He was on his way back from the round he had made of the peacocks' corn bins and during which he startled Kate and Edith. Then Miss Evelyn and Miss Moira each put a finger to their mouths as they went on bowing to each other. Raunce made off. Miss Swift continued,
    'Because they were so poor and hungry and cold in their thin feathers out there in the rain.' She opened her eyes. 'Children,' she said, 'stop those silly tricks' and the girls obeyed. 'But the sun came out to warm them,' she intoned.
    'Jesus,' Albert muttered, 'look at that.'
    This dovecote was a careful reproduction of the leaning tower of Pisa on a small scale. It had balconies to each tier of windows. Now that the birds had settled again they seemed to have taken up their affairs at the point where they had been interrupted So that all these balconies were crowded with doves and a heavy murmur of cooing throbbed the air though at one spot there seemed to be trouble.
    'You're very very wicked boy,' said Evelyn to Albert looking where she thought he looked. What she saw was one dove driving another along a ledge backwards Each time it reached the end the driven one took flight and fluttered then settled back on that same ledge once more only to be driven back the other way to clatter into air again. This was being repeated tirelessly when from another balcony something fell.
    'That's ripe that is,' Albert said.
    'I didn't see,' Evelyn cried. 'I didn't really. What came about?'
    'And then there was a time,' the nanny said from behind closed
eyes and the wall of deafness, 'oh my dears your old nanny hardly knows how to tell you but the naughty unloyal dove I told of.
    'It was a baby one,' Albert said.
    'A baby dove. Oh do let me see.'
    'I daresn't stir,' he said.
    'Where did she fall then?' Evelyn asked.
    'Quiet children,' Miss Swift said having opened her eyes, 'or I shan't finish the story you asked after, restless chicks,' she said. 'And then there came a time,' she went on, shutting her eyes again, hands folded.
    'What? Where?' Moira whispered.
    'It was a baby one,' Albert said, 'and nude. That big bastard pushed it.'
    'The big what?' Evelyn asked. 'Oh but I mean oughtn't we to rescue the poor?'
    'Where did she drop then?' Moira wanted to be told But a rustle made them turn about on either side of Miss Swift who sat facing that dovecote shuteyed and deaf. They saw Kate and Edith in long purple uniforms bow swaying towards them in soft sunlight through the white budding branches, fingers over lips. Even little Albert copied the gesture back this time. All five began soundlessly giggling in the face of beauty.
    'Did you see Mr Raunce?' Kate asked at last.
    ' 'E went that way,' Albert answered