Helen laughed and drew the elder woman’s hand through her arm, patting it as it rested on her diaphanous sleeve which floated from the curves of her beautiful arm.
“Not a bit of it!” she cried. “I’ll take you out, or we’ll take each other, and Kit can trot along by himself, thanking heaven that two such noble specimens of womanhood allow him to watch their gracious backs.”
At dinner Helen chatted merrily with wit and charm on all sorts of subjects, treating Kit and his aunt with much the same kind of friendliness, but giving it to Miss Carrington in warmer degree. She was evidently emancipated from the prejudices of an earlier generation, for she touched on subjects once taboo, treating them as if they were part of daily life without emphasizing them. But Kit remembered that Joan Berkley Paul hardly knew this part of life, and that possibly little Anne would never know it. He thought of Anne Dallas, also, as a sheltered type of mind, as one that sought shelter.
After dinner, when they had returned to the drawing room, Kit asked,
“Does Helen sing to-night?”
“No, Helen doesn’t sing to-night; she waits till she has had a night’s sleep after her journey, because she makes it a rule not to use her voice when she is tired. Helen talks to Kit and gets his view of some of her problems; Miss Carrington says that she has three unescapable letters to write. Bless her old heart! What should we do, we women, without heads to ache and letters to write! Of course it’s obvious that these letters are for Kit’s and Helen’s benefit! So come along, Kit! Take me to your particular shrine, where you smoke, for I’m going to smoke and talk with you.” She put her hand in Kit’s, waiting to be led.
“You’re a great one, Nell!” cried Kit. “What others think you say. Aunt Anne doesn’t know you smoke.”
“Doesn’t she? Well, then, she gives herself the benefit of her ignorance. I’m sure she suspects it, with reason! And feels she’d have to protest if she knew it. Funny, when she’s so up-to-date, that she minds smoking! So many other things are intrinsically wrong, if you’re going to bother about it, and she doesn’t mind them, plays and novels and so on.”
Helen swung his hand as she talked and they went down the hall to the small room at the end which had been set apart for Kit’s use.
Helen threw herself on the couch with careless ease, freeing her narrow feet from the twist of her skirt, and crossing them a little above her pretty ankles.