In the Mountains

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

'Yes, Uncle Rudolph.'

'Poor fellow. Poor fellow.'

'Yes.'

'Poor fellow. Well, he was spared knowing what he had missed. At least he was spared that. And she—his poor wife—how did she take it?'

'Well, I think.'

'Yes. I can believe it. She wouldn't—I am very sure she wouldn't—intrude her sorrows selfishly on others.'

It was at this point that I became aware my uncle had fallen in love. Up to this, oddly enough, it hadn't dawned on me. Now it did more than dawned, it blazed.

I looked at him with a new and startled interest. 'Uncle Rudolph,' I said impetuously, no longer a distrustful niece talking to an uncle she suspects, but an equal with an equal, a human being with another human being, 'haven't you ever thought of marrying again? It's quite a long time now since Aunt Winifred—'

'Thought?' said my uncle, his voice sounding for the first time simply, ordinarily human, without a trace in it of the fatal pulpit flavour, 'Thought? I'm always thinking of it.'

And except for his apron and gaiters he might have been any ordinary solitary little man eating out his heart for a mate.