“Look at all they have given me.” But the most dispossessed peasant, the filthiest housemaid, the seediest nail-biting doctor in Rivabella had what he was pointing out — the view, the sea. Of course, a wave of the hand cannot take in everything; he probably had more than this in reserve. He turned to Molly and said kindly, “When you are a little older you can do some typing for me,” because it was his experience that girls liked doing that — typing for Mr. Cranefield while waiting for someone to marry. Girls were fond of him: He gave sound advice about love affairs, could read the future in handwriting. Molly knew nothing about him, then, but she would recall later on how Mr. Cranefield, who had invented women deep-sea divers, women test pilots, could not imagine — in his innocence, in his manhood — anything more thrilling to offer a girl when he met one than “You can type.”

Barbara broke in, laughing: “She is only eleven.”

This was true, but it seemed to Molly a terrible thing to say.