[CHAPTER V]
THE THREE FRIENDS
Upon the afternoon of that same day at five of the clock they were gathered together in Mr. King's friendly attic—Henry, Millicent and Westcott. Because there was so little room Henry and Millie sat on the bed, Peter Westcott having the honour of the cane-bottomed chair, which looked small enough under his large square body.
The attic window was open and the spring afternoon sun came in, bringing with it, so Henry romantically fancied, a whiff from the flower-baskets in Piccadilly and the bursting buds of the St. James's Church trees—also petrol from the garage next door and, as Peter asserted, patchouli and orange-peel from the Comedy Theatre.
At first, as is often the case with tea-parties, there was a little stiffness. It was absurd that on this occasion it should be so; nevertheless the honest fact was that Millie did not care very greatly for Peter and that Henry knew this. She did not care for him, Henry contended, because she did not know him, and this might be because in all their lives they had only met once or twice, Millie generally making some excuse when she knew that Peter would be present.
Was this jealousy? Indignantly she would have denied it. Rather she would have said that it was because she did not think that he made a very good friend for her dear Henry. He was, in her eyes, a rather battered, grumpy, sulky, middle-aged man who was here married and there not married at all, distinctly a failure, immoral probably and certainly a cynic. None of these things would she mind for herself of course, but Henry was so much younger than she, so much more innocent, she happily fancied, about the wicked ways of the world. Westcott would spoil him, take the bloom off him, make him old before his time—that is what she liked to tell him. And perhaps if they had not met on this special afternoon that little barrier would never have been leaped, but to-day they had so much to tell and to hear that restraint was soon impossible, and Henry himself had so romantic a glow in his eyes, and his very hair, that it made at once the whole meeting exceptional. This glow was indeed the very first thing that Millie noticed.
"Why, Henry," she said as soon as she sat down on the bed, "what has happened to you?"
He was swinging on the bed, hugging his knees.
"There's nothing the matter," he said. "I'm awfully happy, that's all."