“He adores you,” went on Hugh, “and the effulgence that you shed on me almost gilds me in his eyes. But Ambrose is the true judge; he still thinks I am not wholly serious.”
Edith sighed.
“Hugh, we didn’t have a success when Daisy and Jim stayed with us, and Ambrose and—and Perpetua came up to play with them.”
“I know. Daisy beat Ambrose both in running and hop, skip and jump. And she broke his spectacles at rounders. After all, though, Ambrose got his own again: he repeated yards of Tennyson at tea.”
Edith was silent a moment.
“Daisy doesn’t like me,” she said. “She looks on me somehow as a thief. I’ve taken you away from her. She doesn’t know she thinks that, but she does.”
“Aged ten!” remarked Hugh in a tone of absolute incredulity.
“Age doesn’t matter. You can be just as jealous at ten as at eighty.”
“Probably more,” remarked Hugh parenthetically.
“Yes, probably more.”