Henry James

In the Cage Henry James

It had occurred to her early that in her position-that of a young person spending, inframed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie-she should know agreat many persons without their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emotionthe more lively-though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still verymuch smothered-to see any one come in whom she knew outside, as she called it, any onewho could add anything to the meanness of her function. Her function was to sit there withtwo young men-the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the "sounder,"which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupidquestions, give difficult change and, more than anything else, count words as numberless asthe sands of the sea, the words of the telegrams thrust, from morning to night, through thegap left in the high lattice, across the encumbered shelf that her forearm ached withrubbing. This transparent screen fenced out or fenced in, according to the side of thenarrow counter on which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a shop pervadednot a little, in winter, by the poison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the presence ofhams, cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and other solids and fluids that she came toknow perfectly by their smells without consenting to know them by their names.