‘No, really, Uncle, there’s no good talking like that,’ she interrupted, her voice under command again, though still aggrieved, ‘because you know quite well we’re all waiting for you to join us properly—our Society, I mean—and have our a’ventures with us—’
She called it ‘aventures.’ She left out all consonants when excited. The word caught him sharply. Nixie had wounded him better than she knew.
‘Er—then do you have adventures?’ he asked.
‘Of course—wonderful.’
‘But not—er—the sort—er—I could join in?’
‘Of course; very wonderfulindeedaventures. That’s what Daddy used to call them—before he went away.’
It was Dick himself speaking. Paul imagined he could hear the very voice. Another, and deeper, emotion surged through him, making all the heartstrings quiver.
He turned and looked about him, still holding the child tightly by the hand....
Behind him he heard the air moving in the larches, combing out their long green hair; the pampas grass rustled faintly on the lawn just beyond; and from the wood, now darkening, came the murmur of the brook. On his right, the old house looked shadowy and unreal. There stood the chimneys, like draped figures watching him, with the first stars peeping over their hunched shoulders. Dew glistened on the slates of the roof; beyond them he saw the clean outline of the hill, darkly sweeping up into the pallor of the sunset. There, too, past the wall of the house, he saw the great distances of heathland moving down through crowds of shadows to the sea. And the moon was higher.
‘There’s seats in the Blue Summer-house,’ the voice beside him said, with insinuation as well as command.