It was very queer. Aunt Lavvy's opinions had something to do with religion, yet Mamma said you mustn't talk about them.
"I promised, too. I shall have to confess and ask her to forgive me."
"Then," said Aunt Lavvy, "be sure you tell her that I didn't talk to you.
Promise me you'll tell her."
That was what Aunt Charlotte had said. Talking about religion was like talking about being born.
XI
I.
Nobody has any innate ideas. Children and savages and idiots haven't any, so grown-up people can't have, Mr. Locke says.
But how did he know? You might have them and forget about them, and only remember again after you were grown up.
She sat up in the drawing-room till nine o'clock now, because she was eleven years old. She had taken the doll's clothes out of the old wooden box and filled it with books: the Bible, Milton, and Pope's Homer, the Greek Accidence, and Plutarch's Lives, and the Comedies from Papa's illustrated Shakespeare in seven volumes, which he never read, and two volumes of Pepys' Diary, and Locke On the Human Understanding. She wished the Bible had been bound in pink calf like Pepys instead of the shiny black leather that made you think of wet goloshes. Then it would have looked new and exciting like the other books.
She sat on a footstool with her box beside her in the corner behind Mamma's chair. She had to hide there because Mamma didn't believe you really liked reading. She thought you were only shamming and showing off. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Farmer would come in, and Mr. Farmer would play chess with Papa while Mrs. Farmer talked to Mamma about how troublesome and independent the tradespeople were, and how hard it was to get servants and to keep them. Mamma listened to Mrs. Farmer as if she were saying something wonderful and exciting. Sometimes it would be the Proparts; or Mr. Batty would come in alone. And sometimes they would all come together with the aunts and uncles, and there would be a party.