He tore open a corner of the
packet.
'It's real tea. Not blackberry leaves.'
'There's been a lot of tea about lately. They've captured India, or
something,' she said vaguely. 'But listen, dear. I want you to turn your
back on me for three minutes. Go and sit on the other side of the bed.
Don't go too near the window. And don't turn round till I tell you.'
Winston gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain. Down in the
yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and fro between the washtub
and the line. She took two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep
feeling:

They sye that time 'eals all things,
They sye you can always forget;
But the smiles an' the tears acrorss the years
They twist my 'eart-strings yet!

She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed. Her voice
floated upward with the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort
of happy melancholy. One had the feeling that she would have been perfectly
content, if the June evening had been endless and the supply of clothes
inexhaustible, to remain there for a thousand years, pegging out diapers
and singing rubbish. It struck him as a curious fact that he had never
heard a member of the Party singing alone and spontaneously. It would even
have seemed slightly unorthodox, a dangerous eccentricity, lik