"Pretty hair!" he remarked thoughtfully, stroking her curls, "and how is Miss Joan getting on? You haven't let your hair grow yet, Miss Joan."
Joan laughed. "It's more comfortable short," she said.
"So it is," agreed the admiral. "Capital, capital!"
"You must come and see my cream mice, dozens of them——" he began. But at that moment Elizabeth and her brother were announced and Joan hurried to meet them. She examined Mr. Rodney with a new interest, for now he was not just father's friend at the club, but he was Elizabeth Rodney's brother. She thought: "He looks old, old, old, and yet I don't believe he is very old. His eyes are greenish like Elizabeth's, only somehow his eyes look timid like Mother's, and Elizabeth's remind me of the sea. I wonder what makes his back so humped, his coat goes all in ridges——" Then she suddenly felt very sorry for him, he looked so dreadfully humble.
Elizabeth, tall and erect, was dressed in some soft green material; she appeared a little unnatural to the children, who had grown accustomed to her tailor-made blouses and skirts. Her strong brown hair was carefully dressed as usual, but as usual a curl or two sprang away from the hair-pins, straying over her ears and in the nape of her neck. Elizabeth was always pale, but to-day she looked very vital; she was conscious of looking her best, of creating an effect. Then she suddenly wondered whether Joan liked her dress, but even as she wondered she remembered that Joan was only thirteen.
Joan was thinking: "She looks like a tree. Why haven't I noticed before how exactly like a tree she is; it must be the green dress. But her eyes are like water, all greeny and shadowy and deep looking—a tree near a pool, that's what she's like, a tall tree. A beech tree? No, that's too spready—a larch tree, that's Elizabeth; a larch tree just greening over."
The rooms began to fill, and people wandered in and out; it was really quite like a reception. There was a pleasant babble of conversation. James had come in; he had said to himself: "Must look in and share the Mem-Sahib's little triumph—poor Mary!" He really looked quite distinguished in his grey frock coat and black satin tie. Here were General and Mrs. Brooke. By common consent the two old war horses buried their feud on "Anniversary Day." It was: "How are you, Ogden?"
"Glad to see you, General!"
They would beam at each other across their black satin ties; after all—the Service, you know!
Sir Robert and Lady Loo were shown in; good, that they had arrived when the rooms were at their fullest. Lady Loo came forward with her vague toothy smile. She looked like a very old hunter, long in the face, long in the leg and knobbly, distinctly knobbly. Her dress hung on her like badly fitting horse-clothing. To her spare bosom a diamond and sapphire crescent clung with a kind of desperation as if to an insufficient foothold; you felt that somehow there was not enough to pin it to, that there never would be enough to pin anything to on Lady Loo. But for all this there was something nice about her; the kind of niceness that belongs to old dogs and old horses, and that had never been entirely absent from Lady Loo.