Aunt Barbara nodded.

“And your friends?” she asked.  “What will they think?”

Michael looked at her quite simply and directly.

“Friends?” he said.  “I haven’t got any.”

“Ah, my dear, that’s nonsense!” she said.

“I wish it was.  Oh, Francis is a friend, I know.  He thinks me an odd old thing, but he likes me.  Other people don’t.  And I can’t see why they should.  I’m sure it’s my fault.  It’s because I’m heavy.  You said I was, yourself.”

“Then I was a great ass,” remarked Aunt Barbara.  “You wouldn’t be heavy with people who understood you.  You aren’t heavy with me, for instance; but, my dear, lead isn’t in it when you are with your father.”

“But what am I to do, if I’m like that?” asked the boy.

She held up her large, fat hand, and marked the points off on her fingers.

“Three things,” she said.  “Firstly, get away from people who don’t understand you, and whom, incidentally, you don’t understand.  Secondly, try to see how ridiculous you and everybody else always are; and, thirdly, which is much the most important, don’t think about yourself.  If I thought about myself I should consider how old and fat and ugly I am.  I’m not ugly, really; you needn’t be foolish and tell me so.  I should spoil my life by trying to be young, and only eating devilled codfish and drinking hot plum-juice, or whatever is the accepted remedy for what we call obesity.  We’re all odd old things, as you say.  We can only get away from that depressing fact by doing something, and not thinking about ourselves.  We can all try not to be egoists.  Egoism is the really heavy quality in the world.”

She paused a moment in this inspired discourse and whistled to Og, who had stretched his weary limbs across a bed of particularly fine geraniums.

“There!” she said, pointing, “if your dog had done that, you would be submerged in depression at the thought of how vexed your father would be.  That would be because you are thinking of the effect on yourself.  As it’s my dog that has done it—­dear me, they do look squashed now he has got up—­you don’t really mind about your father’s vexation, because you won’t have to think about yourself.  That is wise of you; if you were a little wiser still, you would picture to yourself how ridiculous I shall look apologising for Og.  Kindly kick him, Michael; he will understand.  Naughty!  And as for your not having any friends, that would be exceedingly sad, if you had gone the right way to get them and failed.  But you haven’t.  You haven’t even gone among the people who could be your friends.  Your friends, broadly speaking, must like the same sort of things as you.  There must be a common basis.  You can’t even argue with somebody, or disagree with somebody unless you have a common ground to start from.  If I say that black is white, and you think it is blue, we can’t get on.  It leads nowhere.  And, finally—­”