I might have suggested that the shadowy activity among the trees could have fooled if not enticed the children, since she appeared to be classing me with them, but that idea left me feeling too insulted to speak. In any case the illusion of company beside the path had vanished, though I was unsure when it had, and the boy was objecting “Well, we couldn’t see them.”

“We only heard them calling us,” the girl said. “And they were a he.”

“No, she was a she, and she knew our names.”

“You’re not impressing anyone. Come along at once,” the woman said and came close to grabbing the children to urge them along the path.

We watched them scurry onwards while the woman called after them to slow down. “We ought to listen more to children,” my aunt said.

I assumed she wasn’t including me among them. “What do you think they were talking about?”

“Can you answer that yourself?”

Perhaps I wasn’t being treated as an adult after all. In an attempt to demonstrate maturity I said “I expect they were making it up. That’s what that lady thought, and she knows them.”

“Patrick…” I couldn’t tell what sort of disappointment this expressed, even when my aunt said “I suppose you’re neither one thing nor the other.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Let’s say you’re not a child any longer but trying too hard not to be.”

If this involved a compliment of any kind, my resentment was in its way. “It sounded like the things you used to tell me in here,” I retorted, “what they said.”

By now we were alone on the path. I thought I heard a giggle somewhere in the trees, but it didn’t sound like either of the children. Perhaps the shrill oddly liquid notes were a scrap of birdsong. My aunt glanced in that direction without turning her head. “Shall we leave it, Patrick? You were bound to grow out of my fairy tales. I’m sure your parents will be glad you have.”

She’d raised her voice, presumably because she was walking faster, requiring me to keep up. There was no reason to imagine she wanted anybody besides me to hear. She didn’t pause or speak again until we reached a junction where the red path crossed the blue. “I think that’s enough for today,” she said. “Let’s get out of the sun.”