“I did not say it exactly that way.”

“What words did you use?”

She glanced toward the dining room, then back at me.

“I told her that grown people sometimes learn difficult things from old papers, and that she should not assume you would understand everything immediately.”

“That is not what she told me.”

“Children do not always understand adult paperwork.

They hear a warning and turn it into something worse.”

“She repeated your words to me.”