‘Dear Heart, are you happy?’

I said:

‘I don’t know, Cousin Delia. Ought I to be?’

She said:

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t; but some people are. It is better to be happy.’

I said:

‘Yes. I know it would be better.’

She stood beside my bed, and looked across it at the window, and the branches of the trees. There was a moon outside and we could see the branches; I had pulled the curtain back.

She said:

‘Poor Hugo; I am thinking of my Hugo.’