'Alas, yes. But there is something peculiarly virginal about Mrs. Jewks.'
I admitted that this was so. Part of Dolly's attractiveness is the odd impression she gives of untouchedness, of gay aloofness.
My uncle broke off a stalk of the withered last summer's grass and began nibbling it. He was lying on his side a little below me, resting on his elbow. His black, neat legs looked quaint stuck through the long yellow grass. He had taken off his hat, hardy creature, and the wind blew his grey hair this way and that, and sometimes flattened it down in a fringe over his eyes. When this happened he didn't look a bit like anybody good, but he pushed it back each time, smoothing it down again with an abstracted carefulness, his eyes fixed on the valley far below. He wasn't seeing the valley.
'How long has the poor young thing—' he began.
'You will be surprised to hear,' I interrupted him, 'that Mrs. Jewks is forty.'
'Really,' said my uncle, staring round at me. 'Really. That is indeed surprising.' And after a pause he added, 'Surprising and gratifying.'
'Why gratifying, Uncle Rudolph?' I inquired.
'When did she lose her husband?' he asked, taking no notice of my inquiry.
The preliminary to an accurate answer to this question was, of course, Which? But again a vision of Mrs. Barnes's imploring face rose before me, and accordingly, restricting myself to Juchs, I said she had lost him shortly before the war.
'Ah. So he was prevented, poor fellow, from having the honour of dying for England.'