‘There is no problem here,’ she said, throwing the book out the window. ‘No problem at all.’
And curiously enough there wasn’t. Back home in the cottage everything went just as smoothly as could be. Little Lexington drank his milk and belched and yelled and slept exactly as a good baby should, and Aunt Glosspan glowed with joy whenever she looked at him, and showered him with kisses all day long.
IV
By the time he was six years old, young Lexington had grown into a most beautiful boy with long golden hair and deep blue eyes the colour of cornflowers. He was bright and cheerful, and already he was learning to help his old aunt in all sorts of different ways around the property, collecting the eggs from the chicken house, turning the handle of the butter churn, digging up potatoes in the vegetable garden, and searching for wild herbs on the side of the mountain. Soon, Aunt Glosspan told herself, she would have to start thinking about his education.
But she couldn’t bear the thought of sending him away to school. She loved him so much now that it would kill her to be parted from him for any length of time. There was, of course, that village school down in the valley, but it was a dreadful-looking place, and if she sent him there she just knew they would start forcing him to eat meat the very first day he arrived.
‘You know what, my darling?’ she said to him one day when he was sitting on a stool in the kitchen watching her make cheese. ‘I don’t really see why I shouldn’t give you your lessons myself.’
The boy looked up at her with his large blue eyes, and gave her a lovely trusting smile. ‘That would be nice,’ he said.
‘And the very first thing I should do would be to teach you how to cook.’
‘I think I would like that, Aunt Glosspan.’
‘Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to learn some time,’ she said. ‘Vegetarians like us don’t have nearly so many foods to choose from as ordinary people, and therefore they must learn to be doubly expert with what they have.’
‘Aunt Glosspan,’ the boy said, ‘what do ordinary people eat that we don’t?’
‘Animals,’ she answered, tossing her head in disgust.
‘You mean live animals?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Dead ones.’
The boy considered this for a moment.
‘You mean when they die they eat them instead of burying them?’
‘They don’t wait for them to die, my pet. They kill them.’
‘How do they kill them, Aunt Glosspan?’
‘They usually slit their throats with a knife.’
‘But what kind of animals?’
‘Cows and pigs mostly, and sheep.’
‘Cows!’ the boy cried. ‘You mean like Daisy and Snowdrop and Lily?’
‘Exactly, my dear.’
‘But how do they eat them, Aunt Glosspan?’
‘They cut them up into bits and they cook the bits. They like it best when it’s all red and bloody and sticking to the bones. They love to eat lumps of cow’s flesh with the blood oozing out of it.’
‘Pigs too?’
‘They adore pigs.’
‘Lumps of bloody pig’s meat,’ the boy said. ‘Imagine that. What else do they eat, Aunt Glosspan?’
‘Chickens.’
‘Chickens!’