“Thoughts.”
“Won’t you tell me?”
“I was thinking that I say some very foolish things. I pretend to know so much about life, and I don’t know anything. I borrow other people’s disappointments—Fluffy’s, for instance. And then I talk to poor you, as though you had disappointed me. I wish I were a little girl again, asking you what it was like to have a father. D’you remember?—I always wanted to have a father. Tell me about my father, please, won’t you?”
His eyes had grown blurred. The witch-girl was gone. They had traveled mysteriously back across the years to the old untested faiths and loyalties. She had become his child-companion of the lumber-room days. On her submissive lips, like parted petals, hovered the unspoken words: “I love you. I love you.”
“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” she said gently, “so, if it’ll make you sad to tell me——” Two fingers were spread against the comers of her mouth to prevent it from widening into smiling.
“That’s what Mrs. Sheerug does when she doesn’t want to smile.”
When she asked him “What?” he showed her.
“Funny! The only time I saw her was when she fished me out of the pond with her umbrella. She seemed a strict old lady. And there was a boy named Ruddy; he was my cousin, wasn’t he? It’s a kind of romance to have a father whom you don’t know. I sometimes think I’m to be envied. D’you think I am, Meester Deek?—Ahl you don’t Never mind; tell me about him.”
Then they fell to talking of Eden Row. He had to describe Orchid Lodge to her and how he had first met her mother there, and had thought that she had really meant to marry him. They got quite excited in building up their reminiscences.
“Yes, and you came to our house when my father, whom I didn’t know was my father, was playing lions with me. And I ran to you for protection. When Pauline took me away, I fought to get back to you and got slapped for it You didn’t know that? Didn’t you hear me crying? Go on with what you were saying. It’s fine to be able to remember. Don’t let’s stop.”