Once more, Helen had not been reckoned with. She sat next to Chip at table, and soon saw that he had eyes only for her future sister-in-law—and a tongue only for her too, it seemed. Helen decided to be bored at first, but as she was slightly annoyed with Gordon, who sat on her left, she presently turned her batteries full on the surprised Chip, who had no idea he was neglecting his neighbor. Helen could be very charming when the spirit moved her. After inviting him to her house to meet a writer whose work he admired, she went on to what she had learned was his chief interest. That she lowered her voice to discuss.
“A tremendously important subject … we moderns want to know … made rather a study of these things myself … esoteric beliefs …” were scraps that Judy’s ears couldn’t ignore. And later, “I do wish we’d met before. Why is it that people who do things that are worth while are always so hard to get at? One has to hunt them out of their holes, as,” she laughed, “I mean to hunt you.”
Chip made some appropriate answer to this, and Helen was about to continue her attack when Millie cut in with:
“Is it the Crosbys of Crosby Steynes, or the Crosbys of Middle Regis you’re related to, Major Crosby? They’re both such delightful people.”
And Chip was lost to the rest of the table for a good ten minutes while he and Millie dived together into a sea of relationships. At the end of it, Millie came to the surface with nothing better in the way of a catch than some entirely unclassified Crosbys who lived somewhere near Aberdeen. The ladies then departed to the drawing-room.
Left alone with Mr. Pendleton, Gordon and a friend of his, a Captain Stevens from the Foreign Office, Chip did some classifying on his own account. Gordon, he decided, was a young man who had much to learn, but the chances were that he would never learn it. He liked Mr. Pendleton, who was determined to be a pleasant host. As for Captain Stevens, he thought him a nice fellow, in spite of his admission that he spent his nights dancing. He wondered at first if perhaps Judy—but five minutes’ conversation with the young man convinced him that he wasn’t Judy’s sort. He missed Noel, with his easy manners, and his human touch.
When they went up to the drawing-room, which was cleared for dancing, he went straight to Judy, and sat beside her on a settee, thus defeating Captain Stevens, who had intended doing the same thing.
“Is this where I begin?” asked Chip, looking fearfully at the satiny floor.
“I don’t know,” said Judy. “I’m wondering that myself. Suppose we let the young people dance to-night?” She laughed. “Somehow I haven’t the heart to make you. I’m afraid you’ll hate it, after all, and I’m not a bit in the mood for it myself.”
“I don’t want you to think me a coward,” Chip told her, “but I’d be ever so much happier if I could stay just where I am. Perhaps I could learn something by watching Captain Stevens. I expect he dances like a wave of the sea.”