You hide away mighty well so long as I am on the premises, I know;
but I had a hope that you peeped out a little at other times.
You and your poor aunt are worse off than Carmelite nuns in their cells.
Should you mind telling me how you exist without air, without exercise,
without any sort of human contact? I don't see how you carry on the common
business of life."
She looked at me as if I were talking some strange tongue, and her
answer was so little of an answer that I was considerably irritated.
"We go to bed very early--earlier than you would believe."
I was on the point of saying that this only deepened the mystery when she
gave me some relief by adding, "Before you came we were not so private.
But I never have been out at night."
"Never in these fragrant alleys, blooming here under your nose?"
"Ah," said Miss Tita, "they were never nice till now!" There was
an unmistakable reference in this and a flattering comparison,
so that it seemed to me I had gained a small advantage.
As it would help me to follow it up to establish a sort of
grievance I asked her why, since she thought my garden nice,
she had never thanked me in any way for the flowers I had been
sending up in such quantities for the previous three weeks.
I had not been discouraged--there had been, as she would
have observed, a daily armful; but I had been brought up
in the common forms and a word of recognition now and then
would have touched me in the right place.
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