Her eyes were softly radiant . `` Oh , you have made me so happy ! '' she said tremulously . `` Oh , you can never know how happy ! Nothing hurts now -- nothing ever can hurt , because I know he did care . '' She laid her face down on my shoulder , as a girl might have nestled to her lover , and I bent and kissed her for Uncle Alan . 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 .
XXXXX do Aunt Augusta justice , she never suspected this .
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