‘People don’t know anything about what one thinks except here, you know, Hugo, and if they don’t know they can’t do any harm.’
‘That’s what Mother says,’ he answered. ‘She says no one can take one’s inside world away ever; and nothing can matter too badly while one has that—but she says one must learn to live outside as well, and school does that—and Guy does that, of course.’
‘Oh, Hugo, what shall I do when you are gone?’
‘I suppose dying is like this,’ Hugo said seriously. ‘One going away—the other being left behind. It happens to every one and yet it is just as bad.’
When we went indoors I found Cousin Delia in the drawing-room. She was standing by the end window, looking out into the rose garden, and her back was to me.
I called her and she looked round. She held out her hand to me and I ran up to her.
‘Must Hugo go to school?’ I asked her, and she nodded her head. I looked up and saw she had been crying.
‘Dear heart, he must—isn’t it cruel?’ she said, and I felt as though I had said already all that I was going to say, and she had answered all. I threw my arms round her and burst into tears.
‘Oh, Cousin Delia, I can’t bear it!’ I cried.
She called me her pet and kissed me, and said again to me what she said to Hugo; it was kinder to him really to send him now, she said.