But Alex concealed her thoughts, even, as far as possible, from herself.
The married woman who is denied children may lament her deprivation and receive compassion, but the spinster whose lot forbids her the hope, must either conceal her regrets or know herself to be accounted morbid and indelicate.
"I like babies while they're small," Pam remarked. "Don't I, you little horror of a niece? Other people's, you know. I don't know that I should want any of my own—they're all very well when they're tiny, but I can't bear them at the tell-me-a-story stage. I make it a rule never to tell the children stories at the houses where I stay. I always say, the very first evening, that I don't know any. Then they know what to expect. Some girls let themselves be regularly victimized, if they want to please the children's mother, and get asked again. I must say I do hate that sort of thing myself, and I don't believe it really does any good. Men are generally frightfully bored by the sort of girl who's 'perfectly wonderful with children.' They'd much rather have one who can play tennis, or who's good at bridge."
Pamela laughed comfortably at her own cynicism. "I must say I do think it pays one to be honest in the long run. I always say exactly what I feel myself, and don't care what any one thinks of me."
Alex felt a dull anger at her sister's self-complacent statement of what she knew to be the truth. Pamela could afford to be frank, and her boast seemed to Alex to cast an oblique reflection on herself. She gazed at her without speaking, wretchedly conscious of her own unreason.
"Look at Aunt Alex, Baby!" mischievously exclaimed Pam in a loud whisper. "We're rather afraid of her when she pulls a long face like that, aren't we? Have we been naughty, do you think?"
Alex tried to laugh, contorting her lips stiffly. Pamela jumped up from the floor.
"Really and truly, you know, Alex," she gravely told her sister, "you ought to try and make things less au grand sérieux. I think you'd be much happier, if you'd only cultivate a sense of humour—we all think so."
Then she ran out of the room.
Alex sat still.