Tragic as the words were, Edith could scarcely help smiling, for opposite her Peggy was sitting with her mouth wide open, in order to begin to speak the moment her sister left off.
“Pooh!” she said very loud. “I ought to have told you before, by the way, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Here to-day then I confess. As far as I can see, and as far as the trained eye of the pessimist can see, there is no cloud on all your shining heavens. Whether you or Hugh has been the happiest, I can’t say, but I know of nobody in the world more happy than you both. Hugh has matured, too, grown older, yet without losing his youth, in the most wonderful way. You did that. You took him in your dear hands and made a man of him. It didn’t occur to me that it could be done. And you have given him a son. As for your attack of lonely soul starting with seeing him play the fool with the children, good gracious, what were you thinking about that you let it start? Do you want him not to? I should like a definite answer.”
“Ah, you know I love his doing it!” she said.
“Then lonely soul probably started not with seeing that, but with something at lunch,” remarked Peggy.
“Oh, Peggy, you are good for me!” said Edith. “But there’s more lonely soul to come.”
“Well, I hope it’s more sensible than the last,” said Peggy. “At least I don’t, but you see what I mean. Out with it.”
“Well, it’s this. Since my marriage I have cared less about all other ‘Things in General’ except Hugh. I used to spend delightful days all alone here, always busy, busy with the garden, busy with books, busy with my writing. I’ve dropped them, and they used to be friends, and I feel ungrateful because, good heavens, how they helped me in those other years, and pulled me out of the mire and clay. I was so absorbed in my writing, and now all the creatures of my brain are dead. And that gave me a touch of lonely soul. ‘Gambits,’ for instance, used to be part of me, fused into me, and now it’s only a bit of mosaic, as you said, and I’m sure if anybody picked it out, I shouldn’t even know it was gone.”
Peggy did not say “pooh!” to this. Instead, she nodded her head quite gravely.
“Yes, I can quite understand how that gives you twinges of lonely soul,” she said.