Warren had come for her. It seemed that Mrs. Venables was anxious.
'I knew this was your lunch-place,' he explained to Betty, 'and we guessed she might be with you. I'm sorry to interrupt—but you have finished, haven't you? My mother will be anxious, you see.'
Miranda rose rather shakily and said good-bye. She had quite decided not to take to smoking.
The aspect which the episode bore of the rescue of a truant child from corrupting company was not assisted, certainly, by look or speech. It was perhaps an aspect obvious enough to be left to itself, unaccentuated and unadorned. Rather, indeed, it required, for courtesy's sake, modification. Venables possibly intended to give it this. He had greeted Betty and Gina and Morello (he had met these two before) with pleasantness. He always was pleasant to the Crevequers' friends, though the screen was sometimes rather flimsy. He was not, it seemed, shocked or annoyed to find his young sister smoking in such a restaurant among such company—merely his mother was anxious. His face, as his eyes had passed from one to the other of his sister's companions, had been quite impassive. What gave to Betty such realization as she at the time got—it was not much—was mainly Mrs. Venables' anxiety, which must so hurriedly be appeased. Betty had not known Mrs. Venables for an anxious person; to be a fussing mother was to be bornée. But the suggestion was not aggressive. Partly the green tints of Miranda's round face served as a screen for the other elements in the situation. No one likes his sister to look sick in a restaurant.
So Venables informed Miranda as they drove to their hotel.
'It's not considered particularly good form, you know, to smoke in restaurants till you can do it fairly well. And, anyhow, that's not an especially elegant place to select for the purpose—or, for that matter, for any other purpose.'
'She always goes there,' Miranda returned limply.
Warren's eyebrows went up.
'Oh—she.... That's got nothing to do with you. Each lot of people's got its own resorts.'
'But, Warren, you like her, don't you?'