“Well, you shall,” she said, and suddenly picked him up and whisked him round. What happened after that he never knew. Once, years before, he had escaped from home, gone to the Polchester Fair and ridden on the merry-go-round, ridden on a wonderful coal-black horse all alone under the stars. Something like that earlier experience was this exquisite happiness, delicious movement in which the golden walls, the blazing lights, the glittering, shining floor had their parts. His feet kept no time, they seemed scarcely to touch the floor, but as the music dipped and swung, so he also, floating like a bird, falling like the dying strain of a song, rising like the flight of a star. Suddenly it ceased; he came to earth, breathless, hot and most wonderfully happy. She led him away, holding his hand, to a corner where there was a palm and a little tinkling fountain; they seemed to be quite by themselves.
“Was that all right?” she asked, laughing and fanning herself with a great fan of white feathers.
He could not speak; he gulped and nodded.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He told her.
She smiled. “Jeremy. That’s a pretty name.” He blushed with pleasure. “Do you go to school yet? I expect you’re good at football.”
How wonderful of her to know that, to ask about the one game that was near his heart. He told her eagerly about it, how he had played half-back twice for the school and had been kicked in the eye and hadn’t cared, and how next year he hoped to be the regular half-back because Trefusis, who had been half for three years, was going to Eton, and he was very young to be half; he’d only be eleven then—and if he stayed on until he was thirteen——
I’m afraid that he boasted a little.
“Have you got any brothers and sisters?” she asked him.
He told her all about Mary and Helen, and his mother and father and Aunt Amy and Uncle Samuel—especially about Uncle Samuel. And while he talked he stared and stared and stared, never taking his eyes from her face for a single moment. She was laughing all the time and suddenly she said: