Shredny Vashtar by Saaki, read by Mike Bennett. Conradin was 10 years old and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that

the boy would not live another five years.

The doctor was silky and defeat and counted for little,

but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Rop,

who counted for nearly everything.

Mrs. Derop was Conridden's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three

fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real.

The other two fifths in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing was summed up in himself and his

imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the

mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things, such as illnesses

and coddling restrictions and drawn out dullness, without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have

succumbed long ago. Mrs. de Rop would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked

Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him for his good was a duty which she did not

find particularly irksome.

Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask.

Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be

displeasing to his guardian.

And from the realm of his imagination, she was locked out, an unclean thing which should find no entrance.

In the dull cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message,

not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit trees that it contained

was set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste.

It would probably have been difficult to find a market gardener who would have offered ten shillings

...