‘My dear, a lunatic asylum,’ she said once. ‘It may be very true to life, of a sort, as you say, but I do not enjoy the society of lunatics.’
Hugo was saying:
‘We are all like that really, Aunt Gerry, only we don’t realize it, incredibly weak, and uncertain, and yet sometimes a bit heroic, only we don’t like to think we are like that, so we don’t think it.’
‘I certainly do not think it, Hugo. I hope that you are not like that, and I know that I am not.’
She laughed, and turning to us, held out her hands.
‘Here she is!’ she said, as though they had been speaking about me. I realized that evening how much she cared for me, and felt grateful to her. I bent down and kissed her, and shook hands with George and Hugo. I did not feel shy of Hugo now; it seemed, here in this room, just as it used to be.
George gave me his chair, and we all sat down.
‘How is my great-granddaughter?’ asked Grandmother, and I said she was very well.
George said:
‘I can’t imagine you with a daughter.’