“And Amy expecting her puppies any day now,” said Jack. “I thought they’d have come this morning. She’d want to see them as soon as they were born, wouldn’t you, Alix?—only we must be very careful not to look at them too often. Amy’s awfully nervous when she has her pups.”
“Mummy,” said Giles, eyeing his contented sisters, “you ought to have made her go. Alix is over here to see England, all she can of it. And she really doesn’t see so very much of it with us, you know.”
“I did my best, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, pouring out her tea. “She quite refused. And Toppie aided and abetted her.”
“Yes. I aided and abetted her, Giles,” said Toppie, and she smiled now at him with more sweetness than Alix had ever yet seen on her face for Giles. “She can go another time to Lady Mary’s.”
“Oh, one never knows about that,” Giles murmured. But now he was thinking more about Toppie’s smile than about Alix’s frustrated visit.
“Didn’t you want to go to Cresswell Abbey?” he asked Alix next morning in the study, and with the question the time of their separation collapsed and, his eyes on hers, she felt him near and familiar once more, concerned, as always, for her welfare.
That was it. He understood that it might have given her so much pleasure and Ruth and Rosemary didn’t understand that at all. And he wanted her to have gone because he wanted her to have pleasure. He was like Maman in that.
She confessed. “Yes, I did. But not so much that I could miss you and our dance. The dance was planned for me, Giles.”
Giles rubbed his hand through his hair.—His mother should have corrected him of that trick, though Alix rather liked to see him do it; it left his hair very much on end.
“It’s decent of you; awfully decent of you. But you wanted to go, of course, you dear little kid. And I’d like to think you were to get a wider look at England than you get with us.”