"My father never interferes with anything I want to do."
"Dear me!" said Lady Flint.
The door opened and the men came into the room. Philip made straight for his mother and Miss Baker, who whispered hurriedly: "Lady Flint, may I come and see you?"
"Do, my dear, I am always at home on Sundays. I shall be very pleased to see you. Come next Sunday if you can." And she made a mental note to keep Philip at home next Sunday afternoon. If the two young people were mutually attracted she would help on the courtship to the best of her powers; but she rather wished Miss Baker were not a rich man's daughter, and not an Honourable—it would mean that Philip, like Grace, might be absorbed into a world she did not understand.
"I have been hearing all about you!" exclaimed Dorothy, looking up at Philip as he stood beside them. "How tiresome and naughty you were, and how you wouldn't work, and gave such a lot of trouble after you grew up!"
They all laughed, and Philip glanced affectionately at his mother, a glance that endeared him the more to the long-limbed girl in the green gown....
Then a well-known pianist who was of the party consented to play, and silence was enforced on the audience. Once at the piano the musician continued to give unlimited samples of his own compositions, and Philip, though he thought the fellow made an unconscionable noise, welcomed the respite from conversation. Again he felt depressed, inert, unreasonably impatient with the well-fed, well-dressed throng that had met together merely to eat and drink and to impress each other with their own importance. They were all so self-satisfied in their several ways! He made up his mind that he would get away from London as soon as he could do so without hurting his parents' feelings; go somewhere to fish by himself; he had no use for crowds like this.
"You will come and see us?" repeated Miss Baker when at last farewells became general. "Come and dine quite quietly, just ourselves. When will you come?"
He could hardly plead a press of engagements, yet he was seized with the reluctance to tie himself that so often attacks the newly returned Anglo-Indian; everyone was in such a hurry at home, he wanted to feel free, but evasion was impossible, and a near date was decided upon.