In the Time of Greenbloom Read Online Free

now; you know, he’s polite to Mummy when we meet in hotels and places: helps her off with her coat and things like that. I go and staywith him sometimes and he gives me the most wonderful presents: this butterfly brooch for instance.”
    â€œHow lovely.” He fingered it.
    â€œYou see the eyes?” she asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThose are real rubies.”
    â€œI say!”
    They turned a corner.
    â€œOoh!” she said. “Look! The lake and the swan, no
two
, just as you said. I do love it when things come true don’t you?”
    â€œYes.”
    They quickened their pace so that very soon they were trotting without realising it.
    â€œWhen I was young you know, nearly everything used to come true; but now, even though I’m not awfully old I’m beginning to be surprised when they do. Enid, that’s Mummy, says that when I’m older nothing will ever come true at all, and that when I come out I’m to be sure to have as much fun as—”
    â€œ
Please
!” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œPlease don’t talk about that any more.”
    â€œWhy ever not?”
    â€œI don’t know; it just makes me feel uncomfortable. I mean we might as well still be up at the tennis courts, mightn’t we?”
    She was crestfallen. “I’m sorry! Somehow when I’m with you I can’t help saying the things I’m actually thinking about, and I suppose I think an awful lot about Enid and my father, even though I don’t really want to think about them.”
    â€œ
I
know; I do that too. I keep on wanting and not wanting to think about next term; and today, well I jolly well
won’t
. You do the same. Just think about today, about the lake and the swans and the cakes we ate—things like that.”
    â€œAll right.” She looked at him carefully. “I’ll tell you what! If you promise to be happy about next term, I’ll writeto you every week and what’s more I’ll never even mention you-know-what however much I want to.”
    â€œOh no, you mustn’t do that; letters are different, and if you are thinking about something you must write it so that I can answer, and then it really will be as though we were talking to each other.”
    â€œBut it
won’t
,” she was laughing, “because you won’t
let
me talk about it.”
    He was bewildered for a moment and could think of no reply.
    â€œDon’t frown,” she said. “It makes you look old.
I
understand; you mean that because we won’t be together we can afford to be nearer, more real to each other.”
    â€œYes that’s it. You
are
clever!”
    â€œNo I’m not really; it’s only that I think I’m a little older than you in some ways—girls are you know.”
    They had reached the edge of the lake now: an almost perfect circle with a sagging boat-house on the far side, it lay under the throng of the tall trees in all the stillness and heat of late afternoon. Only a narrow path fringed with rushes and reeds separated its margins from the boles of the trees so that their origins, grey as the legs of elephants, were reflected upon its surface where each vagary of their branches, each fan of their foliage, was darkly contained within its circumference.
    Only at the centre where the tops of the trees, blemished with the black nests of the rookery, ended evenly in an enclosed smaller circle was there a glimpse of the high blue medallion of the sky. The rest, the large periphery, was a closer greener forest strewn over with the white heads of water-lilies and swaying slightly from the movements of the two swans by the farther bank.
    From the water rose the thin reedy smell of river-mud and water-plants. Here and there ‘water-boatmen’ jerked over the reflections, while every now and again a black bubble rose from the depths and broke softly on the surface.
    â€œIsn’t it wonderful?” she