Her mind was on his first sentence, and she appeared to miss his closing words. "I can't answer for my grandmother, but father would have agreed with you. He used to say that the State was an institution for the making of citizens."
"And he talked to you about such things?" It had never occurred to him that a woman could become companionable on intellectual grounds, yet while she sat there facing him, with the light on her brow and lips, and her look of distinction and remoteness as of one who has in some way been set apart from personal joy or sorrow, he realized that she was as utterly detached as Sloane had been when he discoursed on the functions of government.
"Oh, we talked and talked on Sunday afternoons, a few neighbours, old soldiers mostly, and father and I. I wonder why political arguments still make me think of bees humming?"
He laughed with a zest she had never heard in his voice before. "And the smell of sheepmint and box!"
"I remember—and blackberry wine in blue glasses?"
"No, they were red, and there was cake cut in thin slices with icing on the top of it."
"Doesn't it bring it all back again?"
"It brings back the happiest time of my life to me. You never got up at dawn to turn the cows out to pasture, and brought them home in the evening, riding the calf?"
"No, but I've cooked breakfast by candlelight."
"You've never led a band of little darkeys across a cornfield at sunrise?"