Henry James

In the Cage Henry James

It had occurred to her early that in her position-that of a young person spending, in framed andwired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie-she should know a great many personswithout their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively-thoughsingularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered-to see any onecome in whom she knew outside, as she called it, any one who could add anything to the meannessof her function. Her function was to sit there with two young men-the other telegraphist and thecounter-clerk; to mind the "sounder," which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions, give difficult change and, more than anything else, countwords as numberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust, from morning tonight, through the gap left in the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm achedwith rubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to the side of the narrowcounter on which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a shop pervaded not a little, inwinter, by the poison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the presence of hams, cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and other solids and fluids that she came to know perfectly by their smellswithout consenting to know them by their name