"'It is not good for man to live alone.'"
She looked at me long and earnestly. I could see it in her eyes that she would offer to help me by every means within her power. But the futility of it must have been as apparent to her as it was to me, for though her eyes were full of eloquence, she said nothing.
"Now do you understand why I live in London?" I continued. "Why I find company and humanity in crowds? Nearly every morning I sit in the Park and make up stories about the different people who pass by." Suddenly, again, I thought of my electrician and his little nursery maid. "Sometimes," I added, "they make them up for me. I have nothing to do but sit there and look on. It's better than theatres or restaurants. You mustn't think I find them the only resources of life in a city. Certainly restaurants are my theatres sometimes. The whole business is very much like a 'Punch and Judy' show. You can set it up at the corner of any street you like. When you come over to London—if you ever do—I'll take you round and show you some of my little theatres. They are all over the place. Charing Cross Gardens when the band plays—that's one of the best I know; or any A.B.C. shop at lunch time."
I looked at her and laughed. I could not help it. Her face was so serious.
"Well—now do you see?" I concluded; "when you're alone, forgetting is probably the best thing to do, and some ways of doing it are better than others."
For a moment she answered my look, then my laughter, after which, a notion suddenly seizing her, she left me.
"I'm just going into the cottage," said she. "No—you stay there. Sit down on the grass and read your letter," and she was gone.
My obedience was not implicit. I did not sit down. Instead I walked to the cliff's edge, and there, with all the steep fortresses of rock below me, shelving down battlement by battlement to the sea, I took Clarissa's letter from my pocket and read it.
They may have taught her many things, those two old maiden aunts, but they have not yet taught her to write or spell. It was the quaintest letter I think I have ever seen.
"Dear mister Bellairs," it ran. And how it ran! A spider's legs dipped well in ink would scarcely run more wild.