‘Do you? What a scream! I feel like being in church. Perhaps though, you like being in church, and feeling very good?’
I said I didn’t think so.
She said:
‘It’s so subdued, it makes me want to shout . . . and that die-away sort of music that Guy and his mother do . . . oh I know it’s very classy . . . but it doesn’t appeal to me, too much like church, again . . . Guy’s got a decent voice too, he sings a lot with me, jolly different songs,’ and she smiled mischievously, his mother wouldn’t like them!
‘Of course, the garden’s jolly, but the house is awfully dark. I’d cut down half the trees . . . they give me the creeps at night, all swishing on the windows . . . and I’d put on new paint, and lots of jolly curtains instead of those faded things that look as though they’d fall to pieces. I like stripes,’ she said, ‘I’d have a red carpet, or perhaps black, if the walls and curtains were bright. . . . I love doing up rooms! I’ve done them all at home; the “mater” doesn’t mind.’
And then she laughed again.
‘I love to shock you,’ she said. ‘You look as though I’d burnt a bible! Ta-ta!’
And she ran away.
Guy said:
‘Isn’t Dinah lovely? I love to see her run!’