’Are you always up this early?’ I asked him.
‘Almost always,’ he said without looking up. ‘It’s beautiful here, but morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said, and I did. About the only time of day I had been able to stand in Plano was the very early morning, almost dawn, when the streets were empty and the light was golden and kind on the dry grass, the chain-link fenses, the solitary scrub-oaks.
Henry looked up from his books at me, almost curiously. ‘You’re not very happy where you come from, are you?’ he said.
I was started at this Holmes-like deduction. He smiled at my evident discomfiture.
‘Don’t worry. You hide it very cleverly,’ he said, going back to his book. Then he looked up again. ‘The others really don’t understand that sort of thing, you know.’