Charlie said rather peevishly:
‘I say, how do you do it? That turn thing. Who taught you?’
Judith was dumb.
‘She doesn’t recognize us,’ said Mariella with a little giggle. ‘You are Judith Earle, aren’t you?’
‘Oh yes. Oh, I do. Only you’ve grown so.’ She tried to look at them and to her horror felt the tears smart under her eyelids. ‘I didn’t expect——’ Her mouth was trembling, and she stopped in despair, hanging her head.
It was such a shock, such a deep pang of joy and misery.... They would not understand.... After all these years of thinking about them, seeing them so passionately, nursing in her imagination their unreal and dream-like existence, that they should all at once quite casually be there! It was almost as if dead people were to come to life. She prayed to be swallowed up in the ice.
‘Well, you’re no pigmy,’ said Julian.
And they all laughed. Then it was all right. They ceased to swell and waver before her eyes, settled down, began to grow real.
‘Well, I don’t know how it’s done,’ said Charlie, still rather angrily looking at the ice. ‘Mariella, what on earth did you drag us here for? You don’t know any more than I do how it’s done. What a stupid waste of a day!’ The stress of his petulance made his voice, which was breaking, squeak suddenly now and then, in the funniest way, so that nobody could have taken him seriously.
‘Well, you needn’t have come.’ Mariella’s voice was still cool and childish. With her little smile, she turned away from him to watch the skaters.