‘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.
She was living by herself, she said, in rooms near Sloane Square.
‘Not far from us,’ said Mollie. ‘You must come and see us. Do
come and see us.’
Sophia said she would like to come, and Mollie gave her their
address.
‘Come to supper on Thursday,’ she said. ‘Can you? Just my brother
and me.’
And Sophia said she would.
‘A funny, quiet, little person,’ said Grandmother when she had
gone. ‘Not at all like her father, as I remember him.’
‘Oh, not quiet—wild,’ said Hugo. ‘Like a wild animal in a cage.’
‘I think she was very shy,’ said Mollie, ‘but I liked her.’
‘She was wild when she was at school,’ I said. ‘Wild underneath,
I mean’; and I wondered how Hugo had seen so much in so short
a time. But that was like Hugo.