He expects to be talked to."

"So do I."

"I've been trying to talk to you all afternoon and you won't listen. And
you don't know how you can hurt Nicky's feelings. He's miserable if I
don't tell him he's a beautiful pussy the minute he comes into my room.
He creeps away under the washstand and broods. We take these darling
things and give them little souls and hearts, and we've no business to
hurt them. And they've such a tiny time to live, too... Look at him,
sitting up to be carried, like a child."

"Oh wait, my dear, till you _have_ a child. You ridiculous baby."

"Oh come, Jerrold's every bit as gone on him."

"You're a ridiculous pair," said Adeline.

"If Nicky purred round _your_ legs, you'd love him, too," said Anne.

iv

Uncle Robert was not well. He couldn't eat the things he used to eat; he
had to have fish or chicken and milk and beef-tea and Benger's food.
Jerrold said it was only indigestion and he'd be all right in a day or
two. But you could see by the way he walked now that there was something
quite dreadfully wrong. He went slowly, slowly, as if every step tired
him out.

"Sorry, Jerrold, to be so slow."

But Jerrold wouldn't see it.

They had gone down to the Manor Farm, he and Jerrold and Anne. He wanted
to show Jerrold the prize stock and what heifers they could breed from
next year. "I should keep on with the short horns. You can't do better,"
he said.

Then they had gone up the fields to see if the wheat was ready for
cutting yet. And he had kept on telling Jerrold what crops were to be
sown after the wheat, swedes to come first, and vetch after the swedes,
to crowd out the charlock.

"You'll have to keep the charlock down, Jerrold, or it'll kill the
crops. You'll have the devil of a job." He spoke as though Jerrold had
the land already and he was telling him the things he wanted him to
remember.

They came back up the steep pasture, very slowly, Uncle Robert leaning
on Jerrold's arm. They sat down to rest under the beech-trees at the
top. They looked at the landscape, the many-coloured hills, rolling
together, flung off from each other, an endless undulation.

"Beautiful country. Beautiful country," said Uncle Robert as if he had
never seen it before.

"You should see _my_ farm," Anne said. "It's as flat as a chess-board
and all squeezed up by the horrid town. Grandpapa sold a lot of it for
building. I wish I could sell the rest and buy a farm in the Cotswolds.
Do you eve