"This was rather a sinister way of giving, that my mother should want me like this just as her brain was failing.

And yet that failure doesn't affect the quality of her love.

Is it something that shines through the poor tattered fabric?
Anyhow, it has nothing to do with her brain.

It is she herself, somehow, not anything of hers, that wants me.

And you ask if I can stand it ?" Michael with his ugly face and his kind eyes and his simple heart seemed extraordinarily charming just then to Aunt Barbara.