“You are writing a book?” Oswald asked rather ineptly.
“The Stitchwoman; Series Three. Much is expected; much must be given. I am the slave now of a Following.”
Aunt Phœbe went to the wall and stood with her fine profile raised up over the view. She was a little breathless and twitching slightly, but very magnificent. Most of her hair was tidy. “Our old Weald, does it look the same?” she asked.
“Quite the same,” said Oswald, standing up beside her.
“But not to me,” she said. “Indeed not to me. To me every day it is different. Always wide, always wonderful, but different, always different. I know it so well.”
Oswald felt she had worked a “catch” on him. He was faintly nettled.
“Still,” he said, “fundamentally one must recognize that it’s the same Weald.”
“I wonder,” said Aunt Phœbe suddenly, looking at him very intently, and then, as if she tasted the word, “Fundamentally?”
“I don’t know,” she added.
Oswald was too much annoyed to reply.