"Yes, of course. It's Aunt Bee."
She waited for him to come forward to greet her, but he made no move to. After a moment's pause he turned to find a seat for her.
"I'm afraid there is only one chair. It is all right if you don't lean back on it," he said, picking up one of those hard chairs with a black curved back and a tan seat with small holes in it. Bee was glad to sit down on it.
"Do you mind the bed?" he said to Mr. Sandal.
"I'll stand, thank you, I'll stand," Mr. Sandal said hastily.
The details of the face were not at all like Simon's, she thought; watching the boy stick the needle carefully in the sock. It was the general impression that was the same; once you really looked at him the startling resemblance vanished, and only the family likeness remained.
"Miss Ashby could not wait for a meeting at my office, so I brought her here," Mr. Sandal said. "You don't seem particularly — " He allowed the sentence to speak for itself.
The boy looked at her in a friendly unsmiling way and said: "I'm not very sure of my welcome."
It was a curiously immobile face. A face like a child's drawing, now she came to think of it. Everything in the right place and with the right proportions, but without animation. Even the mouth had the straight uncompromising line that is a child's version of a mouth.
He moved over to lay the socks on the dressing-table, and she saw that he was lame.