"Poor Clo isn't very sympathetic in her manner, especially on subjects she doesn't quite understand, like the bringing-up of children. Perhaps, dear, we'll wait a little while before having her here again."
Eleanor understood, and the little while became of quite indefinite duration, without anybody's having to put a distressing resolution into painful words.
As it would have been "disloyal" to admit that a near relation could be anything but loved and admired, Lily and Vonnie were only told, as was indeed the truth, that Aunt Clo lived a great deal abroad. Lily, observant and critical, could, however, perfectly well have told the date at which Father and Mother began always to speak of her absent relative as "your poor Aunt Clo"—and the adjective was to her perfectly indicative of some obscure condemnation.
Lily had intuitions about the grown-up people about her, especially her father and mother, of which they appeared to be quite unaware.
She knew that something, or someone, had made them at last realize that Vonnie's slowness and her rather inarticulate way of speaking were not so many manifestations of naughtiness on her part. They would have preferred it, Lily concluded, if these things had been naughtiness. In some incomprehensible way, they resented having to be anxious about Vonnie.
Sometimes, when Mother spoke to Vonnie sharply for the second or third time and Vonnie only looked at her dumbly with that scared, bewildered gaze which meant that she had not been "paying attention," Father and Mother would exchange a look that Lily indefinably resented.
Then Mother would compress her lips, as though exercising great control over herself, and turn away without speaking.
And Father sometimes said, in that grave, gentle voice which both children perfectly well knew to mean profound vexation:
"Run away and play, little Vonnie. You needn't stay in the drawing-room any more. My Lily can come and look at pictures, if she likes. You can trot off and enjoy yourself in the nursery."
Lily never dared to ask whether she might go to the nursery too, although she knew that Vonnie, humiliated and dejected by these kind words which she was supposed to accept unquestioningly at their spoken value, would only sit by herself on the nursery oil-cloth, quite still, slowly tracing patterns with her finger on the floor. If Lily had been with her, they would have played their own private games with the dolls or the marbles, and have been happy together.