“What are you doing?” he asked, with the freedom of a familiarity reaching back over long years. He shortened his step to keep time with hers, which she at the same moment lengthened.
“I have been for my singing-lesson.”
“And where are you going?”
“Home.”
“I haven’t seen you for ages.”
“You haven’t come. One never sees you, one never meets you anywhere any more.”
Her English was different from the ordinary in having occasional Italian turns and intonations. His partook of the same defect, but in a lesser degree.
“But I have come,” he stood up for himself, “and you were all out except Lily. Didn’t she tell you I was there? We had a long talk. She told me her plans for the future. 16She is going to keep a school for poor children. We discussed their diet and their flannels and every point of their bringing-up. We invented things to do on holidays to give them a good time. There is only one thing I can see leaving a doubt of this school coming into being. It is that Lily has moments, she confessed to me, of thinking almost equally well of a castle with a moat and drawbridge and a page to walk before her carrying her prayer-book on a cushion. She’s a funny young one.”
“It’s partly Fräulein.”
“How are they all?”