“I shall always live here, Gavan,” said Eppie, feeling the skepticism of his “if.”
“Well, that may be so,” he returned, with the manner that made her realize so keenly the difference that was more than a matter of four years.
She insisted now: “I shall live here until I am grown up. Then I shall travel everywhere, all over the world—India, Japan, America; then I shall marry and come back here to live and have twelve children. I don’t believe you care for children as I do, Gavan. How they would enjoy themselves here, twelve of them all together—six boys and six girls.”
Gavan laughed. “Well, I hope all that will come true,” he assented. “Why twelve?”
“I don’t know; but I’ve always thought of there being twelve. I would like as many as possible, and one could hardly remember the names of more. I don’t believe that there are more than twelve names that I care for. But with twelve we should have a birthday-party once a month, one for each month. Did you have birthday-cakes in India, Gavan, with candles for your age?”
“Yes; my mother always had a cake for my birthday.” His voice, in speaking of his mother, seemed always to steel itself, as though to speak of her hurt him. Eppie had felt this directly, and now, regretting her allusion, said, “When is your birthday, Gavan?” thinking of a cake with fifteen candles—how splendid!—to hear disappointingly that the day was not till January, when he would have been gone—long since.
On another time, as they walked up the hillside, beside the burn, she said: “I thought you were not going to like us at all, when you first came.”
“I was horribly afraid of you all,” said Gavan. “Everything was so strange to me.”
“No, you weren’t afraid,” Eppie objected—“not really afraid. I don’t believe you are ever really afraid of people.”
“Yes, I am—afraid of displeasing them, trying them in some way. And I was miserable on that day, too, with anxiety about my poor monkey. I’m sorry I seemed horrid.”