"Anyhow, being sent to bed is horrid," lamented unhappy Vivien.
"You've a life of suppers before you, if you choose," Billy assured her consolingly.
"When I was a girl, we always had supper," said Mrs. Belfield.
"Quite right, Mrs. Belfield," said Gilly, in high approval.
"Instead of late dinner, I mean, Mr. Foot."
Gilly could do no more than look at her, finding no adequate comment.
"Supper should be a mere flirtation with one's food," said Billy.
"A post-matrimonial flirtation?" asked Belfield. "Because dinner must be wedlock! We come back to its demoralizing character."
"Having established that it's wrong, we've given it the final charm, and we'll go and do it," laughed Billy. Mrs. Belfield had already looked once at the clock.
Amid much merriment Vivien and Harry were put into the Nutley brougham, and the rest started to walk to the Lion, no more than half a mile from the gates of Halton. Belfield turned back into the house, smiling and shaking his head. The old, old moralizing was upon him again, in its hoary antiquity, its eternal power of striking the mind afresh. How good it all is—and how short! Elderly he said good-night to his elderly wife, and in elderly fashion packed himself off to bed. He was "sent" there under a sanction stronger, more ruthless, less to be evaded, than that which poor Vivien reluctantly obeyed. He chid himself; nobody but a poet has a right to abandon his mind to universal inevitable regrets, since only a poet's hand can fashion a fresh garland for the tomb of youth.