“Then they _were_ funny.” She searched her memory to make him go on giggling. It was extraordinary too, to discover what impressions she had gathered without knowing it, never considering or stating them to herself. He was getting them. If she ever stated them again they would be stale; practised clever talk; _that_ was how talk was done ... saying things over and over again to numbers of people, each time a little more brilliantly and the speaker a little more dead behind it. Nothing could be repeated. “That was the same year. Mrs. Bailey had a splendid August. Eighteen Americans. I used to go down to meals just to be in the midst of the noise. You never heard anything like it in your life. If you listened without trying to distinguish anything it was _marvellous_, in the bright sunshine at breakfast. It sent you up and up, into the sky, the morning stars singing together. _No._ I mean there was something _really_ wonderful about it. It reminded me of the effect that almost comes when people decide to have a Dutch concert. You know. All singing different songs at the same time. It’s _always_ spoilt. People begin it prepared not to hear the whole effect. I did. I did not realise there would be a wonderful whole. And always just as the effect is beginning, two or three people break down because they cannot hold their songs, and some laugh because they are prepared only to laugh, and the unmusical people put their fingers to their ears, because they can never hear _sound_, never anything but a tune. Oh it would be so wonderful, if only it could be really _held_, everyone singing for all they were worth.” “Have you heard that the Shah preferred of a whole concert, only the tuning of the orchestra?” “I know. That’s always supposed to be a joke. But the tuning of an orchestra, if there is enough of it at once, _is_ wonderful. Why not _both_? It’s the appalling way people have of liking only one thing. Liking ‘good’ music and disapproving of waltzes. The Germans don’t.” “But when I thought of one of my sisters, I used to want to die. If she had been there we should both have yelled, without moving a muscle of our faces. Harriett is perfect for that. We learnt it in church. But when she used to twist all the fingers of her gloves into points, under the seat, and then show them to me suddenly, in the Litany” .... “What? What is this? No. Tell me. You were very happy with your sisters.” “That’s all. She waggled them, suddenly.” “A happy childhood is perhaps the _most_-fortunate gift in life.” “You don’t know you’re happy.” “That is not the point. This early surrounding lingers and affects all the life.”