“More or less—”
“I am going to the seaside,” said Shan’t, “with my darling uncle”—this unctuously.
“Are you? That will be delightful.”
“I thought you were goin’ to say, ‘Oh, that will be joyful,’ but that’s about dying, isn’t it?”
Mr. Pease thought it was.
“Do you think it’s such a very joyful thing to die?”
Mr. Pease hesitated. He had no wish to die. He raised his eyes to the heavens above him: they looked their best, he was sure, from where he stood: his eyes to the waving tree-tops; they had not whispered half the secrets they had to tell him. He looked at the daisy-sown lawn; at Diana who walked a few paces in front of him; at Shan’t who walked beside him. He didn’t want to die; he wanted desperately to live. To live till that day when he should be asked to pay the bill for some blue stuff such as Shan’t’s frock was made of. Blue stuff like that must be fairly cheap. It was not much to aspire to—the blue cottony stuff, he meant! His grasp tightened on the hand of Shan’t.
“You do squeeze hard,” she said—“it makes my hand so hot, like when you hold daisies, you know.”
“I was afraid I might lose you,” he explained, releasing her hand.
“I wouldn’t run away, it would be rude—wouldn’t it? Only if I go to the sea—that won’t be so very rude—” Then she added: “I didn’t want to leave go—not specially.” She slipped her hand in his.