To live there always, I thought, would be bliss, provided that Philip was with me, always in a house covered with ivy and conducted by an aunt who baked and fried for you and tied up your cuts, and would clean half a hundred perchlings for you without a murmur, though by the end of it her face and the adjacent windows were covered with the flying scales. “Why don’t you catch two or three really big ones?” she would question, sighing for weariness, but still smiling at us, and putting on her crafty-looking spectacles. “Whew, if we could,” we said one to another. It seemed possible for the moment; for she was a wonderful woman, and the house wonderful too, no anger, no sorrow, no fret, such a large fire-place, everything different from London, and better than anything in London except Abercorran House. The ticking of her three clocks was delicious, especially very early in the morning as you lay awake, or when you got home tired at twilight, before lamps were lit. Everything had been as it was in Aunt Rachel’s house for untold time; it was natural like the trees; also it was never stale; you never came down in the morning feeling that you had done the same yesterday and would do the same to-morrow, as if each day was a new, badly written line in a copy-book, with the same senseless words at the head of every page. Why couldn’t we always live there? There was no church or chapel for us--Philip had never in his life been to either. Sunday at Lydiard Constantine was not the day of grim dulness when everyone was set free from work, only to show that he or she did not know what to do or not to do; if they had been chained slaves these people from Candelent Street and elsewhere could not have been stiffer or more savagely solemn.
Those adult people were a different race. I had no thought that Philip or I could become like that, and I laughed at them without a pang, not knowing what was to save Philip from such an end. How different from those people was my aunt, her face serene and kind, notwithstanding that she was bustling about all day and had trodden her heels down and had let her hair break out into horns and wisps.
I thought of the race of women and girls. I thought (with a little pity) that they were nicer than men. I would rather be a man, I mused, yet I was sure women were better. I would not give up my right to be a man some day; but for the present there was no comparison between the two in my affections; and I should not have missed a single man except Aurelius. Nevertheless, women did odd things. They always wore gloves when they went out, for example. Now, if I put gloves on my hands, it was almost as bad as putting a handkerchief over my eyes or cotton wool in my ears. They picked flowers with gloved hands. Certainly they had their weaknesses. But think of the different ways of giving an apple. A man caused it to pass into your hands in a way that made it annoying to give thanks; a woman gave herself with it, it was as if the apple were part of her, and you took it away and ate it in peace, sitting alone, thinking of nothing. A boy threw an apple at you as if he wanted to knock your teeth out with it, and, of course, you threw it back at him with the same intent; a girl gave it in such a way that you wanted to give it back, if you were not somehow afraid. I began thinking of three girls who all lived near my aunt and would do anything I wanted, as if it was not I but they that wanted it. Perhaps it was. Perhaps they wanted nothing except to give. Well, and that was rather stupid, too.