"I knew that five minutes after I grinned like a Cheshire cheese and posed before your people as the sheepish husband. All the same it was worth it, here and there." He was damned if he'd give himself away either.
"I think so too," she said.
The car turned and went through the great iron gates.
"I shall like the Galatea all the better because you've touched her," he said.
She laughed because her lips insisted on trembling. "I suppose you asked Malcolm to give you that. Don't you think one poet in the family's enough? There's mother's machine-made hair and Aunt Honoria's perfect nose and dear old daddy's kind but suspicious eyes. 'It's all right in the wintertime but in the summertime it's awful.'" She sang these pathetic words beneath her breath and waved her hand to the waiting family with an air of superb confidence and affection.
He didn't laugh again. Metaphorically he took off all his hats to her and laid them at her feet.
XL
The perfect Mrs. Vanderdyke, fresh from the manipulations of her constant time-fighters, arranged herself on the top step of the house. With a light, controlling touch she placed her husband on her right and her sister-in-law on her left, so that, viewed from below, they should be exactly framed in the elaborate doorway. She did this, as she did everything, with a self-conscious sense of the decorative, of being like royalty, in the public eye, of standing before an imaginary battery of masked cameras as the chief representative of American high society.
It was a good picture, she knew, and one of which her country might well feel proud. She was quite satisfied with her own appearance. Her head, which had taken an hour to dress, was a work of art. She wore no hat. After some consideration she had come to the conclusion that a hat would spoil the intimate, home-like effect that she desired to achieve. Her face, strangely un-lined and immobile, had the faintest touch of color. Her chin, held high in order that there should not be the mere suggestion of sag, certainly gave her the appearance of gargling, but what did that matter? Her dress, which had almost broken a woman's heart, gave her youth. Of her sister-in-law she felt proud. She added the right note of dignity and autumnal beauty, with her white hair and eagle nose and unconscious grace. She wished that her husband had taken more pains with his clothes and had put up a better fight with elderliness but, after all, he was Vanderdyke and a man.
She was pleased with the way in which Franklin helped Beatrix out of the car and, going down two steps, she welcomed the daughter of whom she knew absolutely nothing as though she were a rather interesting and important relation. "How well you look, dear Beatrix," she said, in a voice which gave the impression of having been as well massaged as her face. She placed a light kiss on the girl's cheek. "But I've never seen you so sunburned before," she added reproachfully.