She was introduced to Philip Mark. Her eyes lingered up him, for an instant, mischievously, almost interrogatively. To him she seemed to say: “What on earth are you doing inside here? How did you ever get in? And what are you here for?” She seemed to say to him: “You and I—we know more than these others here—but just because of that we’re not half so nice.”
“Well, Henry,” she said, and he felt that she was laughing at him and blushed. He knew that his socks were hanging loosely. He had lost one of his suspenders.
“Well, Millie,” he answered, and thought how beautiful she was.
It was one of the Trenchard axioms that anyone who crossed the English Channel conferred a favour—it was nice of them to go, as though one visited a hospital or asked a poor relation to stay. Paris must have been glad to have had Millie—it must have been very gay for Paris—and that not because Millie was very wonderful, but simply because Paris wasn’t English.
“It must be nice to be home again, Millie dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard comfortably.
Millie laughed and for a moment her eyes flashed across at Philip Mark, but he was looking at Katherine. She looked round upon them all, then, as though she were wondering how, after all, things were going to be now that she had come home ‘for good’—now that it would be always and always—well, perhaps not always. She looked again at Philip Mark and liked him. She surrendered herself then to the dip and splash and sparkle of the family waters of affection. They deluged and overwhelmed her. Her old grandfather and the great-aunt sat silently there, watching, with their bird-like eyes, everything, but even upon their grim features there were furrowed smiles.
“And the crossing was really all right?” “The trees in the Park were blowing rather ...” “And so, Milly dear, I said you’d go. I promised for you. But you can get out of it as easily as anything....”
“You must have been sorry, as it was the last time, but you’ll be able to go back later on and see them....”
And her father. “Well, they’ve had her long enough, and now it’s our turn for a bit. She’s been spoiled there.... She won’t get any spoiling here....”
He roared with laughter, flinging his head back, coming over and catching Millie’s head between his hands, laughing above her own laughing eyes. Henry watched them, his father cynically, his sister devotedly. He was always embarrassed by the family demonstrations, and he felt it the more embarrassing now because there was a stranger in their midst. Philip was just the man to think this all odd.... But Henry was anxious about the family behaviour simply because he was devoted to the family, not at all because he thought himself superior to it.