“What’s shaken you out of your nest?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve not felt the same since that row with Annable. And Lettie said to me: ‘Here, you can’t live as you like—in any way or circumstance. You’re like a bit out of those coloured marble mosaics in the hall, you have to fit in your own set, fit into your own pattern, because you’re put there from the first. But you don’t want to be like a fixed bit of a mosaic—you want to fuse into life, and melt and mix with the rest of folk, to have some things burned out of you——’ She was downright serious.”
“Well, you need not believe her. When did you see her?”
“She came down on Wednesday, when I was getting the apples in the morning. She climbed a tree with me, and there was a wind, that was why I was getting all the apples, and it rocked us, me right up at the top, she sitting half way down holding the basket. I asked her didn’t she think that free kind of life was the best, and that was how she answered me.”
“You should have contradicted her.”
“It seemed true. I never thought of it being wrong, in fact.”
“Come—that sounds bad.”
“No—I thought she looked down on us—on our way of life. I thought she meant I was like a toad in a hole.”
“You should have shown her different.”
“How could I when I could see no different?”