“In love?”
“Perhaps.”
“Married?”
“I wish they had been. After he’d left her, she was awfully cut up. I did what I could for her. You remember that hundred pounds?”
“My father—at Chelsea—the Christmas present?”
“Yes. I couldn’t keep it. I gave it to her.”
“You always have to be giving something,” I said.
We were sitting on an upturned barrow in the paddock when this conversation took place. I thought how characteristic of Uncle Obad that was—to be helping others at a time when he himself was most in need of help. But his kindness knew no seasons. Then I began, as a very young man will, to think of Kitty, and, because of her frailty, to picture her through a haze of romance.
“Where’s Kitty now?” I asked.
“She’s in a photographer’s at Oxford. She serves behind a counter. But, come, you’ve not told me yet what you think of my fowls.”