The child hesitated, and with a look of distress, managed to say:
“I have a brother.”
Carmen la Tosca pushed away the paper and regarded him with amusement, and a little amazement.
“He is two years older than I am—and there’s something I don’t understand—and you know everything.”
“Who said so?”
“The neighbours, my father, my mother, my sister, the schoolmaster, the postman——”
“That will do.”
“You are a woman of the world.” The childish sound of his voice became terribly apparent.
“My brother is where no one understands—My sister said, ‘I don’t like Bailey any more, he has lost that cunning little light in his eyes’—and I said, ‘It’s still there when you give him something he likes, and he is untying it, with his head bent down——’”
“How do you come to think of all this?”