"Oh, Norman, I'm afraid I was rather horrid. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about asking Fred to help me too. But let's forget all about him, and about it, and enjoy ourselves. It will be rather fun this afternoon, won't it? I feel I can really enjoy myself now."
She chatted on gaily as they climbed up through the wood at the Grange garden, and hardly left off chattering and laughing as preparations and adjustments were made for their drive, and she was packed into the front seat beside the owner of the car. It was Norman's suggestion that she should keep company with his friend Blundellovitch on the outward journey and with his friend Pollocksky on the homeward. But he altered this arrangement on the return, and insisted upon sitting behind with her himself. "She's my cousin and not yours," was his argument, "and I find I've got a lot to say to her."
For a good many months afterwards Pamela looked back upon that expedition as the last entirely happy time she had had. It seemed as if the troubles that had been darkening her home life increasingly of late had all been swept away, for she had no doubt then that her father and her uncle would immediately compose their differences, and the close intimacy between the two families would go on as before. It had not occurred to her that the Grange would be completely unoccupied. Her uncle and aunt had often been away, for many weeks together, and she had sometimes been with them, in the South of France or in Scotland, or elsewhere. It would be fun to go to the house in Suffolk; she had not been away from home for a long time, and change was agreeable to her, especially in that company.
So she gave herself up to the enjoyment of the hour, and was sparkling and radiant with happiness. Mr. Blundellovitch, as he was called throughout the afternoon, was a stricken victim of her charms, and Mr. Pollocksky, though unrighteously deprived of his opportunities, was not behind him in admiration of her. They had a merry time in the house which they visited, and started homewards so late that it was dark long before they reached Hayslope. During the last half hour she and Norman talked quietly together, her hand in his. There had been misunderstandings between them, as between their parents, but they were done away with now, and they were as close together as they had ever been. It was not until then that she realized that the Grange was to be forsaken in two days' time, which induced a slight touch of melancholy, not unpleasing under the circumstances, which included a full moon, and a delicious astringent hint of autumn in the warm night air. Norman wasn't sure that even the partridges would make it worth while to exchange Hayslope for Eylsham; but Pamela said wisely that it would be better for their two families not to be so close to one another for a time. "When you're as old as Dad and Uncle Bill," she said, "it's more difficult to make up a quarrel. They'll like each other much better if they don't see so much of one another for a time."
"Yes," said Norman, "I think that's true. They wouldn't be able to treat it as you and I should. We might have little rows occasionally, but we should always make them up, and when we had we should forget all about them at once. That's one of the advantages of being young. I like being young, don't you? It comes over me sometimes that I am, just as it used to come over me out there, 'I'm in France.' But I'm not in France now, and I shan't be young any longer in half a minute or so."
"I don't know that I quite follow you," said Pamela politely.
"Oh, I follow myself, all the way. Don't you see? Take the governor, for instance. He must have enjoyed himself as we're doing now when he was our age, and sometimes thought how jolly it was to be young. And being old seemed centuries off, or at least so far off that it didn't count. Yet here he is thirty years or so older, and it's what he's doing now that matters to him. It isn't that it's a short time or a long time. It's just that time doesn't seem to count somehow. Look at old Horace, we three Latinists were reading this morning. He was extraordinarily alive, and aware of himself, so to speak. But nearly two thousand years have slipped by since he got tight, or half tight, and played the goat generally. They don't count when you read him, and another few years won't count for us when we look back on to-day. We're here—now. That's all that seems to matter."
"Yes, I think I see it dimly," said Pam. "Anyhow, I'm very glad that we are here now. It's a lovely world, and I think you must enjoy it more when you're young."