When we had halted, she lifted me out of the dog-cart and carried me into the house to a large room at the back, which looked into a shadowy garden and a paddock beyond. It seemed older and more opulent than any house I had known as yet. There was so much space about it.
My uncle came in from stabling Dollie. “Well, Lavinia, I couldn’t get home to lunch. Very sorry, but it couldn’t be helped.”
He darted a look across at me, wondering how much I had told her. The secret was established; I knew that I must hold my tongue. I knew something else—that he was afraid of her. Throughout the meal he kept up a stream of strenuous pretense, discussing large plans aloud with himself. What they were I cannot now remember. I suppose my grandmother would have called them spuffle. Suddenly he rose from the table, saying that he had a lot of letters to answer and excused himself. But when I went into his room an hour later to bid him good-night, he was sitting before his desk, doing nothing in particular, biting the end of his pen.
When my aunt and I were left together I felt very lonely at first. She had sat so silent all through supper.
But when the door had closed, she turned to me laughing. I knew at once that, like most grown-ups when they are together, she had only been shamming. Now she was-going to be real.
“Did you have a good day in the country?” she asked. “Oh, he can’t deceive me; I could tell by the dust on the wheels.”
Then, realizing, I suppose, that it was not fair to pump me, she stopped asking questions and began to speak about myself. She drew up a chair to the window and sat with me in the dark with her arms about me. She seemed extraordinarily young, and when her silky gray hair touched my cheek as she bent above me, I wondered what had made my uncle say that she wasn’t like us and wouldn’t understand.
They each had their secret world of desire: his was the open road, where liberty was and lack of convention; hers was a home with fire-light and children. She was childless. Into both these worlds a little boy might enter. That night as I lay awake in bed I was puzzled. Why was it that grown people were so funny, and could never be real with one another?