“Are you quite all right?” Joseph asked.
Temperance looked up from her book. She had been in the garden for the better part of an hour, ostensibly reading, actually doing the thing she did when something was occupying her mind and she needed the particular quality of outside air and apple trees and dogs going about their business to help her thinkthrough it. Joseph was standing a few feet awa, hands behind his back and his posture was correct.
“I am perfectly well,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”
“You have been out here for quite some time,” he said.
“I enjoy the garden in the morning.”
“You do,” he agreed. “Although you have not turned a page in the last twenty minutes, which suggests that the book is not the primary activity.”
“Sit down, Joseph,” she said.
He sat on the other end of the bench.
“Breakfast was strange this morning,” Joseph said.
“Was it?” she said.
“You and my father were very polite to each other,” he said.
“We are generally polite to each other,” she said.
“Not like that,” Joseph said. “Usually when you are polite to each other there is something underneath it.”
She looked at him sideways. “You are very perceptive for someone your age,” she said.
“I have been told,” he said.
“By whom?”
“Various people,” he said. “My father also tells me, occasionally, though he usually follows it with a suggestion that I direct my perceptiveness toward my Latin exercises.”
She almost smiled. “And do you?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Latin is less interesting than people. Something happened last night?”
“We went to the opera,” she said.
“You usually come and find me to say goodnight, which you didn’t do last night,” He said it without accusation, just as an observation he had made. “And my father sat in his study for a long time after you went up. I could see the light under the door.”
She said nothing.
“I am not asking you to tell me what happened,” Joseph said. “I only wanted to ask if you were all right.”
She looked at him. He was looking at the garden still, his face composed and patient, and she thought about what it had cost him to come out here and say this.
“I am all right,” she said.
“Good,” he said.
They sat for another moment.
“Joseph,” she said.
“Yes?”
“What made you come out here this morning?”
