"Auntie!" cried the boy. "Can't I go into this garden? There's a swing
there."
"Oh no!" said Janet. "This isn't our garden. We must go home. We only
just called in. And big boys who won't shake hands--"
"Yes, yes!" Edwin dreamily stopped her. "Let him go into the garden
for a minute if he wants to. You can't run off like that! Come along,
my lord."
He saw an opportunity of speaking to her out of the child's hearing.
Janet consented, perhaps divining his wish. The child turned and stared
deliberately at Edwin, and then plunged forward, too eager to await
guidance, towards the conquest of the garden.
Standing silent and awkward in the garden porch, they watched him
violently agitating the swing, a contrivance erected by a good-natured
Uncle Edwin for the diversion of Clara's offspring.
"How old is he?" Edwin demanded, for the sake of saying something.
"About nine," said Janet.
"He doesn't look it."
"No, but he talks it--sometimes."
George did not in fact look his age. He was slight and small, and he
seemed to have no bones--nothing but articulations that functioned with
equal ease in all possible directions. His skin was pale and unhealthy.
His eyes had an expression of fatigue, or he might have been
ophthalmic. He spoke loudly, his gestures were brusque, and his life
was apparently made up of a series of intense, absolute absorptions.
The general effect of his personality upon Edwin was not quite
agreeable, and Edwin's conclusion was that George, in addition to being
spoiled, was a profound and rather irritating egoist by nature.
"By the way," he murmured, "what's _Mr_ Cannon?"
"Oh!" said Janet, hesitating, with emotion, "she's a widow."
He felt sick. Janet might have been a doctor who had informed him that
he was suffering from an unexpected disease, and that an operation
severe and perilous lay in front of him. The impartial observer in him
asked somewhat disdainfully why he should allow himself to be deranged
in this physical manner, and he could only reply feebly and very meekly
that he did not know. He felt sick.