This was a wish almost unprecedented, with her. At home, no one had shown much interest in what she had to say or listened for long if she had begun hesitatingly to confide any of her small private worries, few as they were, because her brothers and sister were all livelier and a little more articulate. They were also more positive and more demanding, with opinions which they believed to be their own, and they got themselves listened to. Slightly more attention had been paid to Christine between the age of seventeen and twenty-seven. But as it gradually became clear that she was not going to marry, the family, also gradually, ceased to take much notice of what she said. As to what she may have been thinking or feeling … in that house, thoughts and feelings came a bad second, as we know, to electric toasters. Now, of course, she could not have talked to any of her family, and did not want to. There might, she knew, have been a show of real interest if they had thought that this renewed acquaintance with Mr.
