Aunt Aggie, who thought that no one was paying her very much attention, said:
“I can’t think why Katherine wouldn’t let me get that silk for her at Liberty’s this afternoon. I could have gone up Regent Street so easily—it wouldn’t have been very much trouble—not very much, but Katherine always must do everything for herself.”
Mrs. Trenchard said: “It was very kind of you, Aggie dear, to think of it—I’m sure it was very kind,” and Aunt Betty said: “Katherine would appreciate your thinking of her.”
“I wonder, with the fog, that any of you went out at all,” said Uncle Tim, “I’m sure I was as nearly killed as nothing just coming back from the Strand.”
Aunt Aggie moved her hands on her lap, looked at them, suspiciously, to see whether they meant what they said, and then sighed—and, to Henry, this all seemed to-night wonderful, magical, possessed of some thrilling, passionate quality; his heart was beating with furious, leaping bounds, his eyes were misty with sentimental happiness. He thought that this was life that he was realising now for the first time.... It was not—it was two glasses of Port.
He looked at his grandfather and thought of the wonderful old man that he was. His grandfather was very small and very thin and so delicate was the colour of his white hair, his face, and his hands that the light seemed to shine through him, as though he had been made of glass. He was a silent old man and everything about him was of a fine precious quality—his black shoes with the silver buckles, the gold signet ring on his finger, the black cord with the gold eye-glasses that lay across his shirt-front; when he spoke it was with a thin, silvery voice like a bell.
He did not seem, as he sat there, to be thinking about any of them or to be caring for anything that they might do.
His thoughts, perhaps, were shining and silver and precious like the rest of him, but no one knew because he said so little. Aunt Betty, with a glance at the clock, rose and slipped from the room. The moment had arrived....
V
Very soon, and, indeed, just as the clock, as though it were summoning them all back, struck the half-hour, there they all were again. They stood, in a group by the door and each one had, in his or her hand, his or her present. Grandfather, as silent as an ivory figure, sat in his chair, with Aunt Sarah in her chair beside him, and in front of him was a table, cleared of anything that was upon it, its mahogany shining in the firelight. All the Trenchard soldiers and the Trenchard Bishop looked down, with solemn approval, upon the scene.