Hugo asked me to be kind to Sophia. It had not occurred to me
that I was not.
He said:
‘She likes you so much, and you used to like her.’
He had come to dinner at Campden Hill. I could see that he was
excited and happy, he talked so much at dinner, and his eyes
shone. Grandmother noticed it too, for I saw her watching him,
and she asked him, when the coffee came, what he had been doing
that day.
He said:
‘I went for a walk with Sophia Watson in Richmond Park.’
Grandmother said:
‘Her father’s name was _Lane_ Watson.’
‘Yes, I know, but she thinks that sounds pretentious. She says
their name was really only Watson to begin with. She hates fuss.’
‘It is generally simpler to have the same name as one’s parents
until one is married,’
‘I don’t think Sophia’s parents can be very nice people. They
have not been kind to her.’
‘Ah,’ said Grandmother slowly. ‘That is a different matter.’
‘The trees were beautiful in Richmond Park, so bright and red
and gold. I suppose they have more colour when the summer has
been hot. The leaves were coming down all round us, like rain,
in the wind. It was very windy.’
Grandmother said:
‘Oh.’
She looked at Hugo over her spectacles, and Hugo flushed.
‘I wish you could have been there,’ he said rather lamely. ‘It
was awfully nice.’
Grandmother laughed; she said:
‘You had better bring the young woman to see me, Hugo, I liked
her much better than the other one—Miss . . . Connell, wasn’t
it, with the fair hair, but—take your time.’
Hugo murmured something inarticulate; he was peeling a pear and
I could not see his face, but I knew he was saying it wasn’t
like that at all.
Coffee came in, and after the coffee grandmother went upstairs.
She had not looked at me at all, and I was glad.
We went into the drawing-room, Hugo and I, and sat down by the
fire. At least I sat down and Hugo stood up with his back to
the fire. He took a cigarette from the jade box on the chimney-piece,
and then he began to talk. The room was rather dark, for Grandmother
would not have electric light, and there was only one lamp on
the table behind.
He said:
‘Aunt Gerry is a dear, I am awfully fond of her. But she does
get the wrong end of the stick sometimes. I suppose in her generation
it would have been like that.’