"Need my aunt have gone away?" he asked after the first greeting.
"I did not say so."
"She seemed to think that she was not to stay."
"Can I help what she thinks, John? Of course she feels that she is—"
"Is what?"
"An interloper—if I must say it."
"But I have sent for her, and I have begged her to stay."
"Of course she can stay if she wishes. But, dear John, there must be much to be said between you and me which,—which cannot interest her; or which, at least, she ought not to hear." He did not contradict this in words, feeling himself to be too weak for contest; but within his own mind he declared that it was not so. The things which interested him now were as likely to interest his great-aunt as his grandmother, and to be as fit for the ears of the one as for those of the other.
An hour had passed after this during which she tended him, giving him food and medicine, and he had slept before she ventured to allude to the subject which was nearest to her heart. "John," she said at last, "I have been thinking about Chowton Farm."
"Well."