“And you,” Gavan repeated. “I haven’t changed so much, though,” he said.
“And I have? Really much? Long skirts and turned up hair are a transformation. It’s wonderful to see you, Gavan. It makes one get hold of the past and of oneself in it.”
“Does it?”
“Doesn’t it?” She let go his hands, and moving to the fire and standing before it while she surveyed him, she went on, not waiting for an answer:
“But I don’t suppose that you have my keenness of memory. It all rushes back—our walks, our games, our lessons, the smell of the heather, the very taste of the heather-honey we ate at tea, and all the things you did and said and looked; your building the Petit Trianon, and your playing dolls with me that day; your Agnes, in her pink dress, and my Elspeth, whom I used to whip so.”
“I remember it all,” said Gavan, “and I remember how I broke poor Elspeth.”
“Do you?”
“All of it: the attic windows and the pine-tree under them, and the great white bird, and the dreadful, soft little thud on the garden path.”
“Yes, I can see your face looking down. You were quite silent and frozen. I screamed and screamed. Aunt Barbara thought that you had fallen at first from the way I screamed.”
“Poor little Eppie. Yes, I remember; it was horrid.”