"Happy because of the Baronet?"
"No, not so much the Baronet although he's all right, and it's awfully interesting if I can only do the work. No, it's something else. I'll tell you all about it when we've had tea. I say, Millie, how stunning you look in that orange jumper. You ought always to wear orange. Oughtn't she, Peter?"
"Yes," said Peter, his eyes fixed gravely upon her.
Millie flushed a little. She didn't want Westcott's approval. A nuisance that he was here at all! It would be so much easier to discuss everything with Henry were he not here.
Mr. King arrived, very solemn, very superior, very dead.
He put down the tray upon the rather rickety little table. They all watched him in silence. When he had gone Henry chuckled.
"He thinks I'm awful," Henry said. "Too awful for anything. I don't suppose he's ever despised any one before as he despises me, and it makes him happy. He loves to have some one who's awful. And now about Miss Platt—every bit about Miss Platt from her top to her toe!"
He went to the tea-table and began to pour out the tea, wishing that Millie and Peter would like one another better and not look so cross.
Millie began. She had come that afternoon burning to tell everything about the Platt household, and then when she saw Westcott there she was closed like an oyster. However, for Henry's sake she must do something, so she began because in her own way she was as truly creative as Henry was in his. She found that she was enjoying herself and it grew under her hand, the Platt house, the Platt rooms, the Platt family, Victoria and Ellen and Clarice, and the little doctor and Beppo and the housekeeper and the statue of Eve and all the letters. . . .
They began to laugh; she was laughing so that she could not speak and Henry was laughing so that the two brazen and unsympathetic muffins which Mr. King had provided fell on to the carpet, and then Peter laughed and laughed more than that, and more again, and any ice that there had ever been was cracked, riven, utterly smashed!