Aunt Barbara was perfectly willing to do this, and she opened the discussion very pleasantly with peals of laughter.

“My dear, I delight in you,” she said; “and altogether this is the most entertaining day I have ever spent here.  Combers are supposed to be very serious, solid people, but for unconscious humour there isn’t a family in England or even in the States to compare with them.  Our lunch just now; if you could put it into a satirical comedy called The Aristocracy it would make the fortune of any theatre.”

A dawning smile began to break through Michael’s tragedy face.

“I suppose it was rather funny,” he said.  “But really I’m wretched about it, Aunt Barbara.”

“My dear, what is there to be wretched about?  You might have been wretched if you had found you couldn’t stand up to your father, but I gather, though I know nothing directly, that you did.  At least, your mother has said to me three times, twice on the way to church and once coming back:  ‘Michael has vexed his father very much.’  And the offertory plate, my dear, and, as I was saying, lunch!  I am in disgrace too, because I said perfectly plainly yesterday that I was on your side; and there we were at lunch, with your father apparently unable to see either you or me, and unconscious of our presence.  Fancy pretending not to see me!  You can’t help seeing me, a large, bright object like me!  And what will happen next?  That’s what tickles me to death, as they say on my side of the Atlantic.  Will he gradually begin to perceive us again, like objects looming through a fog, or shall we come into view suddenly, as if going round a corner?  And you are just as funny, my dear, with your long face, and air of depressed determination.  Why be heavy, Michael?  So many people are heavy, and none of them can tell you why.”

It was impossible not to feel the unfreezing effect of this.  Michael thawed to it, as he would have thawed to Francis.

“Perhaps they can’t help it, Aunt Barbara,” he said.  “At least, I know I can’t.  I really wish I could learn how to.  I—­I don’t see the funny side of things till it is pointed out.  I thought lunch a sort of hell, you know.  Of course, it was funny, his appearing not to see either of us.  But it stands for more than that; it stands for his complete misunderstanding of me.”

Aunt Barbara had the sense to see that the real Michael was speaking.  When people were being unreal, when they were pompous or adopting attitudes, she could attend to nothing but their absurdity, which engrossed her altogether.  But she never laughed at real things; real things were not funny, but were facts.

“He quite misunderstands,” went on Michael, with the eagerness with which the shy welcome comprehension.  “He thinks I can make my mind like his if I choose; and if I don’t choose, or rather can’t choose, he thinks that his wishes, his authority, should be sufficient to make me act as if it was.  Well, I won’t do that.  He may go on,”—­and that pleasant smile lit up Michael’s plain face—­“he may go on being unaware of my presence as long as he pleases.  I am very sorry it should be so, but I can’t help it.  And the worst of it is, that opposition of that sort—­his sort—­makes me more determined than ever.”