Grandmother laughed at us.
‘What, six years, is it, or five? I should hope you would remember.’
I laughed too. I said:
‘Six years is a great deal at our time of life.’
Sophia smiled. ‘It seems a very long time,’ she said.
Hugo was watching her, but he did not say much. He never spoke to people about their poetry or pictures or things they did, unless he knew them well.
It was impertinent, he used to say—like talking about their feelings for their husbands or wives.
George said that was a mistake—that out of every ten authors nine at least liked to talk about their own works.
I never wrote myself, or painted, and I don’t know which is true in general, but I am sure that with Sophia, Hugo was quite right.
She seemed to unfreeze after a bit, when she saw we were not going to talk about her book.