“You might just not have done it, Ivor!” Dear Aunt Moira!
“Of course,” said Ivor softly, “it rather puts the lid on my going up to Oxford.” He was so frightfully pleased about not going up to Oxford—he simply could not have told any one why, it was just a tremendous bubbling within him of freedom from all sorts of things—that he couldn’t help playing the fool about it, thus letting Aunt Moira see exactly how pleased he was. She stared at him—at the young man who had so suddenly grown out of her reach! And maybe she realised that the events of that day had somehow released in him something individual which had been in hiding, something unpleasant but individual.
“Then what will you do?” she put to him sharply. “For you must do something, you know. In this world, nowadays. I will not have you live all your life as my nephew....”
“I thought you might go to the Bar,” she said.
“I thought,” said Ivor, “that I might write....”
“Oh dear!” sighed Aunt Moira.
And there was silence. But let it be understood that Aunt Moira had never intended to force Ivor’s preference about a career. Aunt Moira never really forced any one’s preference about anything. Liberty was the one feast to which she commanded her guests—it was only that her invitations sometimes made liberty just a little unrecognisable.
She had always liked people who wrote sensible things. But it seemed so vague, this writing.
“But you could write as well,” she suggested, rather brutally. “You must do something, don’t you see? And though I’ve no doubt you are very clever, as every one is clever nowadays, you can’t possibly have enough to write about at your age to take up all your time.”
“But I don’t want it to take up all my time! That’s just the point, Aunt Moira.”