“But you needn’t go unless you want to,” Daphne added, enviously. Herself she had to go, whether she wanted to or not.
“I’d like to,” Eileen said.
“It’s a way of seeing the Cathedral, of course,” said Eddy. “It’s rather beautiful by candlelight.”
So they all settled to go, even Arnold, who thought that of all the ways of seeing the Cathedral, that was the least good. However, he went, and when they came back they settled down for a festive night, playing coon-can and the pianola, and preparing punch, till half-past eleven, when the Dean came in from his study with Tennyson, and read “Ring out, wild bells.” At five minutes to twelve they began listening for the clock to strike, and when it had struck and been duly counted, they drank each other a happy new year in punch, except Jane, who disliked whisky too much to drink it, and had lemonade instead. In short, they formed one of the many happy homes of England who were seeing the old year out in the same cheerful and friendly manner. Having done so, they went to bed.
“Eddy in the home is entirely a dear,” Eileen said to Jane, lingering a moment by Jane’s fire before she went to her own. “He’s such—such a good boy, isn’t he?” She leant on the words, with a touch of tenderness and raillery. Then she added, “But, Jane, we shall have his parents shocked before we go. It would be easily done. In fact, I’m not sure we’ve not done it already, a little. Arnold is so reckless, and you so ingenuous, and myself so ambiguous in position. I’ve a fear they think us a little unconventional, no less, and are nervous about our being too much with the pretty little sulky sister. But I expect she’ll see to that herself; we bore her, do you know. And Arnold insists on annoying her, which is tiresome of him.”
“She looks rather sweet when she’s cross,” said Jane, regarding the matter professionally. “I should like to draw her then. Eddy’s people are very nice, only not very peaceful, somehow, do you think? I don’t know why, but one feels a little tired after talking much to them; perhaps it’s because of what you say, that they might easily be shocked; and besides, one doesn’t quite always understand what they say. At least, I don’t; but I’m stupid at understanding people, I know.”
Jane sighed a little, and let her wavy brown hair fall in two smooth strands on either side of her small pale face. The Deanery was full of strange standards and codes and values, alien and unintelligible. Jane didn’t know even what they were, though Eileen and Arnold, living in a less rarefied, more in-the-world atmosphere, could have enlightened her about many of them. It mattered in the Deanery what one’s father was; quite kindly but quite definitely note was taken of that; Mrs. Oliver valued birth and breeding, though she was not snobbish, and was quite prepared to be kind and friendly to those without it. Also it mattered how one dressed; whether one had on usual, tidy, and sufficiently expensive clothes; whether, in fact, one displayed good taste in the matter, and was neither cheap nor showy, but suitable to the hour and occasion. These things do matter, it is very certain. Also it mattered that one should be able to find one’s way about a Church of England Prayer Book during a service, a task at which Jane and Eileen were both incompetent. Jane had not been brought up to follow services in a book, only to sit in college ante-chapels and listen to anthems; and Eileen, reared by an increasingly anti-clerical father, had drifted fitfully in and out of Roman Catholic churches as a child in Ireland, and had since never attended any. Consequently they had helplessly fumbled with their books at evening service. Arnold, who had received the sound Church education (sublimely independent of personal fancies as to belief or disbelief) of our English male youth at school and college, knew all about it, and showed Jane how to find the Psalms, while Eddy performed the same office for Eileen. Daphne looked on with cynical amusement, and Mrs. Oliver with genuine shocked feeling.
“Anyhow,” said Daphne to her mother afterwards, “I should think they’ll agree with father that it wants revising.”
Next day they all went tobogganing, and met the Bellairs family. Eddy threw Molly and Eileen together, because he wanted them to make friends, which Daphne resented, because she wanted to talk to Molly herself, and Eileen made her feel shy. When she was alone with Molly she said, “What do you think of Eddy’s friends?”
“Mrs. Le Moine is very charming,” said Molly, an appreciative person. “She’s so awfully pretty, isn’t she? And Miss Dawn seems rather sweet, and Mr. Denison’s very clever, I should think.”