O. J. L.—No, not likely, not at the same time. But you can take opportunities of saying more about your life there.
Yes, that's why he has been collecting information. He does so want to encourage people to look forward to a life they will certainly have to enter upon, and realise that it is a rational life. All this that he has been giving you now, and that I gave to Lionel, you must sort out, and put in order, because I can only give it scrappily. I want to study things here a lot. Would you think it selfish if I say I wouldn't like to be back now?—I wouldn't give this up for anything. Don't think it selfish, or that I want to be away from you all. I have still got you, because I feel you so close, closer even. I wouldn't come back, I wouldn't for anything that anyone could give me.
He hardly liked to put it that way to his mother.
Is Alec here? (Feda looking round.)
O. J. L.—No, but I hope he will be coming.
Tell him not to say who he is. I did enjoy myself that first time that Lionel came—I could talk for hours.
(O. J. L. had here looked at his watch quietly.)
I could talk for hours; don't go yet.
He says he thinks he was lucky when he passed on, because he had so many to meet him. That came, he knows now, through your having been in with this thing for so long. He wants to impress this on those that you will be writing for: that it makes it so much easier for them if they and their friends know about it beforehand. It's awful when they have passed over and won't believe it for weeks,—they just think they're dreaming. And they won't realise things at all sometimes. He doesn't mind telling you now that, just at first, when he woke up, he felt a little depression. But it didn't last long. He cast his eyes round, and soon he didn't mind. But it was like finding yourself in a strange place, like a strange city; with people you hadn't seen, or not seen for a long time, round you. Grandfather was with me straight away; and presently Robert. I got mixed up between two Roberts. And there's some one called Jane comes to him, who calls herself an aunt, he says. Jane. He's uncertain about her. Jane—Jennie. She calls herself an aunt; he is told to call her 'Aunt Jennie.' Is she my Aunt Jennie? he says.
O. J. L.—No, but your mother used to call her that.