ii

She had not noticed Percy, who had entered the room during her absence; and Percy, who had been washing his face, had not noticed Patricia. When he discovered that a stranger was in the room Percy was slightly annoyed. He did not like strangers. It had taken him some weeks to grow used to Pulcinella and even now he sometimes spat at the little dog, for Percy had been for three years the dominating force in this house. When Percy wished to leave or to enter a room he gave a single blood-curdling deep miaow; when he thought the time had come for him to be nursed he took his welcome for granted; when he shook off the years and demanded a game they were all at his service. Although Pulcinella was insistently lively, no real romp ever occurred in which Percy was not the leader. Even Pulcinella, who barked and bounded in the effort to produce a mock-battle, was afraid of Percy; and the human beings were not so much afraid as respectful and affectionate towards him. Percy therefore disliked strangers, who disturbed his sense of what was proper. Pausing in the act of licking delicately extended fingers, he stared rudely at Patricia. He decided to watch her for a few moments before making up his mind as to her acceptability as a new acquaintance.

Patricia, quite unconscious of this important scrutiny, was allowing herself to be entertained by Percy's elders. She did not see a big Persian cat, whose long hair was nearly as black as his dignified nose and whose tail, when paraded, was as large as an ostrich feather. She merely looked from the small face with bushy whiskers of Mr. Mayne to the beautiful soft complexion of Mrs. Mayne, and again to the exuberantly expressive eyes and lips of Claudia. She liked Claudia better and better each minute. She did not look at all at Edgar, in whom she was conscious of feeling no true interest whatever.

"Isn't it very lonely for you to live alone, Miss Quin?" Mrs. Mayne was asking. She did not wait for an answer; but continued: "I've never lived alone, so I don't know what it's like; but I should have thought it likely to make a young girl miserable. Yet I know, of course, that one sometimes wishes very much to be alone with one's thoughts. As a holiday it must be very pleasant...." It was the quiet voice of a contented woman that meandered slowly and almost prattlingly among words that came without effort.

"Think of the liberty, mother!" exclaimed Claudia. "Not always having other people to consider. Not always having somebody to say she isn't ladylike."

"I like it," said Patricia. "And I'm not at all ladylike."

"Perhaps you're not much alone?" suggested Claudia.

"Oh, yes. All day. But I'm generally out in the evenings."

"Claudia always speaks as though I were a fault-finding mother; but it isn't true, and I don't think she means it altogether. I should be sorry to think I was a fault-finder," ruminated Mrs. Mayne.

"You're a darling," Claudia declared. "But, like most mothers, you live in the past. You don't feel that you're grown up and that you don't understand this generation. That's what I complain of." She turned to Patricia. "This is a very difficult household. Father doesn't care two straws about anything that goes on outside the house, except the things that are put into newspapers. He would write letters to the papers, only he prides himself on never having written to the papers. He's conceited about it. That's what saves us endless humiliation. Mother thinks the world's a very distressing place, and the latest sort of girls very top-heavy and reckless and...."

"I don't think they're very happy," urged Mrs. Mayne.

"Perhaps they're not. All the better. Perhaps something will come of it—unless they enjoy their unhappiness too much, as some of them do. She doesn't understand that there have been changes since she was a girl."

"Only too well." Mrs. Mayne showed spirit.

"Well, she doesn't sympathise with them. She doesn't realise her standards don't apply to to-day. She's absolutely——"

"I'm sure I'm very faulty," agreed Mrs. Mayne, almost approvingly. Edgar laughed at his mother's unquenchable power to discomfit Claudia, and the two exchanged a glance.

"As for Edgar," proceeded Claudia, "he's quite hopeless. I bring friends here, and he thinks they're awful. So they are—he's quite right. But I shouldn't know they were awful if he didn't point it out. That's the disastrous consequences of bringing people here. Edgar says nothing about them at all, and so he stimulates my corrosive faculty. He'll drive me to having surreptitious friends."

Patricia's nose was a little in the air.

"I don't think he's very human," she said.

"You see?" Claudia looked in triumph at her brother. To Patricia, she continued. "The trouble about him is, he's a good man. He's old-fashioned. He has principles. It's a nuisance when a man has principles. He was brought up to think it was the thing to be decent and honourable, and so on. He doesn't live in our age at all, when everybody's trying hard to be wicked and only half-succeeding."

"I know," agreed Patricia, relishing the irony but perceiving the truth of her new friend's analysis. "I think it's impossible for one generation to understand the next."

"Exactly. But the next can understand the one—like winking."

"I'm sure I'm very easy to understand," said Mrs. Mayne. "Edgar isn't. I've never understood him. Or, for that matter, Claudia, although she's my own daughter."

"You know too much about me to understand me, mother," cried Claudia. "That's true, isn't it, Edgar? Too many things, I mean."

"It's certainly ingenious," agreed Edgar, quietly. He had hitherto been listening in silence to the debate, although all had been aware of his presence.

"What nonsense!" cried Mrs. Mayne.

Patricia thought: How nice and silly they are with each other! Her spirits rose yet higher. She felt that here the talk was the kind of talk—nonsensical and yet true—that she liked above every other kind. It was clear and light, without strain and without stereotyped slang. After so much that was quite otherwise, that aped smartness and achieved only repetition, this chatter gave her ease of heart as nothing else could have done. She smiled upon them all, impulsively, so that Edgar turned away to hide his passionate relief.