Esther thought, in her physical aversion to auntie, that he must indeed have been happy in the only escape left open to him.
"Where is Susan?" auntie inquired, after a brief interlude of coughing. It could never be known whether her coughs were real. She had little dry coughs of doubt, of derision, of good-natured tolerance; but perhaps she herself couldn't have said now whether they had their origin in any disability.
"Grandma is in her room," said Esther faintly. She felt a savage distaste for facing the prospect of them together, auntie who would be sure to see grandmother, and grandmother who would not be seen. "She lies in bed."
"All the time?"
"Yes."
"Not all the time!"
"Why, yes, auntie, she lies in bed all the time."
"What for? Is she crippled, or paralysed or what?"
"She says she is old."
"Old? Susan is seventy-six. She's a fool. Doesn't she know you don't have to give up your faculties at all unless you stop using them?"