"Don't be too hard on your mother till you're quite sure it wasn't my aunt."
"It may have been both of them. Anyhow, it's awful. Just—just when I was so happy."
"Just when I was so happy," he said. "But that's the sort of thing they do."
"I knew you'd be sorry for me."
XVIII
I.
She was shut up with Papa, tight, in the narrow cab that smelt of the mews. Papa, sitting slantways, nearly filled the cab. He was quiet and sad, almost as if he were sorry she was going.
His sadness and quietness fascinated her. He had a mysterious, wonderful, secret life going on in him. Funny you should think of it for the first time in the cab. Supposing you stroked his hand. Better not. He mightn't like it.
Not forty minutes from Liverpool Street to Victoria. If only cabs didn't smell so.