Apart from the daily routine of the office, which often became mechanical, so that I could pursue it and think of other things even while it was going on, I had no true life in the present—that is to say no strongly conscious life of my own, apart from the region of imagination—except when I was sitting in the deep old escutcheoned bay-window of the Hall, looking out upon the old shaded courtyard, where the sunlight, darting [111] amidst the spreading plane-trees, flecked and chequered the marble pavement, and the little carved fountain trilled and rippled till it incited the canary hanging in its gilded cage to break into song that drowned its splashing murmur, and silenced the sparrows twittering about the heavy woodwork of the old porch.
— from Miss Grantley's Girls, and the Stories She Told Them by Thomas Archer