"Nonsense. You know more than Light-Johnson. Speak up whenever you have a mind to. It does my sister good."
And this was the beginning of an alliance between the two.
[CHAPTER II]
MILLIE AND PETER
And here are some extracts from a diary that Millicent kept at this time.
April 14.—Just a week since I started with the Platts and I feel as though I'd been there all my life. And yet I haven't got the thing going at all. I'm in nearly the same mess as I was the first morning. I'm not proud of myself, but at the same time it isn't my fault. Look at the Interruptions alone! (I've put a capital because really they are at the heart of all my trouble.) Victoria herself doesn't begin to know what letting any one alone is. I seem at present to have an irresistible fascination for her. She sits and stares at me until I feel as though I were some strange animal expected to change into something stranger.
And she doesn't know what silence means. She says: "I mustn't interrupt your work, my Millie" (I do wish she wouldn't call me "my Millie"), and then begins at once to chatter. All the same one can't help being fond of her—at least at present. I expect I shall get very impatient soon and then I'll be rude and then there'll be a scene and then I shall leave. But she really is so helpless and so full of alarms and terrors. Never again will I envy any one with money! I expect before the War she was quite a happy woman with a small allowance from her father, living in Streatham and giving little tea-parties. Now what with Income Tax, servants, motor-cars, begging friends, begging enemies, New Art and her sisters she doesn't know where to turn. Of course Clarice and Ellen are her principal worries. I've really no patience with Clarice. I hate her silly fat face, pink blanc-mange with its silly fluffy yellow hair. I hate the way she dresses, always too young for her years and always with bits stuck on to her clothes as though she picked pieces of velvet and lace up from the floor and pinned them on just anywhere.
I hate her silly laugh and her vanity and the way that she will recite a poem about a horse (I think it is called something like "Lascar") on the smallest opportunity. I suppose I can't bear seeing any one make a fool of herself or himself and all the people who come to the Platts' house laugh at her. All the same, she's the happiest of the three women; that's because she's more truly conceited than the others. It's funny to see how she prides herself on having learned how to manage Victoria. She's especially sweet to her when she wants anything and you can see it coming on hours beforehand. Victoria is a fool in many things but she isn't such a fool as all that. I call Clarice the Ostrich.