But Uncle Tim shook his head. “It’s all very well, George, but you’ll have to break up soon. The girls will be marrying—Katherine and Millicent—”
“Rot,” said George, “Millie’s still at school.”
“She’s coming home very soon—very shortly I believe. And besides you can’t keep a family together as you used to. You can’t. No one cares about the home at all now-a-days. These youngsters will find that out soon enough. You’ll be deserting the nest immediately, Henry, my friend, won’t you?”
This sudden appeal, of course, confused Henry terribly. He choked over his wine, coloured crimson, stammered out:
“No, Uncle Tim—Of course—Of course—not.”
George Trenchard looked at his son with approval.
“That’s right. Stick to your old father while you can. The matter with you, Tim, is that you live outside the world and don’t know what’s going on.”
“The matter with you, George, is,” his brother, speaking slowly and carefully, replied, “That you haven’t the ghost of an idea of what the modern world’s like—not the ghost. Up in the clouds you are, and so’s your whole family, my sister and all—But the young ones won’t be up in the clouds always, not a bit of it. They’ll come down one day and then you’ll see what you will see.”
“And what’ll that be?” said George Trenchard, laughing a little scornfully.
“Why you and Harriet doing Darby and Joan over the dying fire and no one else within a hundred miles of you—except a servant who’s waiting for your clothes and sleeve-links.”