She sat down and looked about the studio, puckering up her eyebrows nervously and making her eyes very round and large.
“You never told me how old you are,” he said nervously.
“I’m nineteen.”
“I’m twenty. Just twenty. How long are you going away for?”
“I don’t know. Until the winter, I expect.”
“What will you do there in the country? It is important that you should tell me, because I must know how to think of you. What shall you do? Is it a big house? Are you—are you rich?”
“No. It is not a very big house. My mother is fairly well off, but I have four brothers, and they all have to go to Oxford and Cambridge. . . . There’s a good garden, and I shall spend a lot of time in that, digging and looking after the flowers. And I shall try and do some work. There’s a big barn I can have for a studio.”
“A big barn. Yes. Are your brothers nice men?”
“Two of them.”
“And there’s a river and a common. May I write to you?”