"Then your mother could not have died twenty years ago."
"Yes. She died long before I was born."
Miss Clement slowly shook her head. "But not twenty years. That is impossible."
"But she did."
"Then she was your step-mother perhaps?"
"No. My own mother."
This conversation was becoming so very absurd that Miss Clement made no answer. She merely looked away—and studied the room.
The boy smiled as if amused at her ignorance. "Don't you understand how it was?"
The lady's only reply was to close her eyes wearily. But he stepped nearer and laid a hand on each of her knees, to wake her up.
"Don't you see," he said, "the difference between eight and twenty is twelve, isn't it?"