“Did she!”
“Yes, an’ there’s the chicks that get lost in the grass, I love them, an’ there’s a starling that nests every year in the chimney, and my own mouse which plays in my room at night, an’ . . .”
God, the boredom of this.
“. . . but sometimes I hate it all.”
“It must be horrid for you.”
“I’ve had no one else to tell it all to.”
“No, of course not. June, here we are in the wood. Do you feel the hollowness of it? For the trees crowd about us, and their branches roof us in slyly, with sly noises that one can just hear. And we seem to be in another world now, for the cart that is creaking along the road outside is so faint, floating through the twigs that urge the sound gently along as they are tickled by the wind. So that we might be on our way to some dark and dangerous spot. June, it is mediæval.”
“What’s that?”
“It means long ago. But we are happy together, aren’t we? You know, you are the only person I would take with me to Swan’s Wood.”
There was Mummy, but she did not count.