“So you got down all right,” he said.
She let a circular sweeping glance pause infinitesimally four times, once for each of the aunts and uncles.
“Yes, and what a delicious room,” she said. “You hadn’t told me half.”
Peter was surely rather distrait, she thought. Even now he didn’t catch the point of her appreciation.
“It’s good panelling,” he said. “There’s more of it in my sitting-room next door. We’ll go there after tea.”
She held out her cup. “Silvia, darling, one inch more tea, please,” she said. “An inch. Pure greed.”
Silvia had an absent smile for her but no speech, and took the cup from Peter’s hand without looking at him till he had turned again towards Nellie with the desired inch. She then followed him, quick as a lizard, with one glance of mute raised eyebrows. Nellie got that, too; plucked it off, put it in her book. She felt that she was surrounded by interests: there were the priceless uncles and aunts; there was also something else going on, not so farcical, not farcical at all, perhaps, but quite as interesting.
“My dear, you have got a cold,” she said to Peter.
“I thought I had,” said he wheezily.
“I rather like having a cold,” she went on. “It’s an excuse for going to a doctor and being told that one has a brilliant constitution. That’s Dr. Symes’s cure. You’re a Symite, aren’t you?”