The Garden of Spices Jims tried the door of the blue room . Yes , it was locked . He had hoped Aunt Augusta might have forgotten to lock it ; but when did Aunt Augusta forget anything ? Except , perhaps , that little boys were not born grown-ups -- and that was something she never remembered . To be sure , she was only a half-aunt . Whole aunts probably had more convenient memories . Jims turned and stood with his back against the door . It was better that way ; he could not imagine things behind him then . And the blue room was so big and dim that a dreadful number of things could be imagined in it . All the windows were shuttered but one , and that one was so darkened by a big pine tree branching right across it that it did not let in much light . Jims looked very small and lost and lonely as he shrank back against the door -- so small and lonely that one might have thought that even the sternest of half-aunts should have thought twice before shutting him up in that room and telling him he must stay there the whole afternoon instead of going out for a promised ride . Jims hated being shut up alone -- especially in the blue room . Its bigness and dimness and silence filled his sensitive little soul with vague horror . Sometimes he became almost sick with fear in it . To do Aunt Augusta justice , she never suspected this . If she had she would not have decreed this particular punishment , because she knew Jims was delicate and must not be subjected to any great physical or mental strain . That was why she shut him up instead of whipping him . But how was she to know it ? Aunt Augusta was one of those people who never know anything unless it is told them in plain language and then hammered into their heads . There was no one to tell her but Jims , and Jims would have died the death before he would have told Aunt Augusta , with her cold , spectacled eyes and thin , smileless mouth , that he was desperately frightened when he was shut in the blue room .
So he was always shut in it for punishment ; and the punishments came very often , XXXXX Jims was always doing things that Aunt Augusta considered naughty .
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