She Came Back

Lilla, in a yellow jumper and a short brown skirt, had that air of having just come out of a bandbox which seems to be the birthright of American women. Her dark curls shone. Everything about her was just right both for herself and the occasion. There was a perfect ordered elegance which appeared as natural as it is in a hummingbird or a flower. Through it all, like the scent of the flower and the song of the bird, there came that friendly warmth which was all her own. She laughed a little now.

“Why don’t you just say it, Aunt Milly, without bothering how?”

Milly Armitage’s frown relaxed. A wide rueful smile showed her excellent teeth.

“I might as well, mightn’t I? I can’t see any good in beating about the bush myself, but people seem to expect it somehow. My mother always said I just blurted things out, and so I do. If they’re pleasant, what’s the good of wrapping them up? And if they’re not, well, it’s a good thing to get them off your chest and out of the way. So there it is-Philip and A

Lilla sat with her chin in her hand looking across the table, her puzzled brown eyes just touched with a smile.

“Why don’t you like her, Aunt Milly?”

“I don’t know-I just don’t. She’s a disaster for Philip- she always was-but they might have shaken down together if there hadn’t been this break. But when a man has just begun to realize that he’s made the wrong marriage, and then for three and a half years he thinks he’s got free of it, what do you imagine he’s going to feel like when he finds he’s up to his neck in it again. Even without his having got so fond of Lyn.”

“Is he fond of Lyn?” The brown eyes were very deeply troubled.

Milly Armitage nodded.

“I suppose that’s one of the things I oughtn’t to say. But it’s true. And there wasn’t anything wrong about it until A

“It sounds horrid,” said Lilla in a distressed voice.

Milly Armitage made the face which she had been forbidden to make when she was ten years old. It made her look quite extraordinarily like a frog, and conveyed better than any number of words the discomfort of the Jocelyn ménage. Then she said,

“It’s going to be very hard on Lyn having them in town. She is devoted to A

“Yes?”

Milly Armitage put out her hand impulsively.

“That’s why I was so glad to hear about Pelham Trent. I don’t mean that I want anything serious to come of it-he’s a bit old for her.”

“He doesn’t seem old.”

“About thirty-seven, I should say. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a perfect godsend to have someone to admire her, to take her about, to take up her time. I don’t suppose anything will come of it, but she likes him, and he’ll help to tide her over a bit of bad going.”

The conversation ended as it had begun, with Pelham Trent.

CHAPTER 16

Miss Nellie Collins settled herself in the corner of an empty third-class carriage…She hoped someone else would get in- someone nice. She never really cared about travelling in an empty carriage, because of course there was always the chance of someone getting in who was not really nice. When she was a little girl she had heard a story about a lunatic who got into a train with a friend of her Aunt Chrissie and made her eat carrots and turnips all the way from Swindon to Bristol. Her Aunt Chrissie’s friend had a very severe nervous breakdown after this experience, and though it had happened at least fifty years ago, and this local train from Blackheath to Waterloo stopped much too frequently to give a lunatic any real scope, Miss Nellie preferred to be on the safe side. She sat up very straight in her best coat and skirt, her Sunday hat, and the fur necktie which she kept for great occasions because it was begi

Just as she was begi

The family party followed the two men into the train, but the little woman in the dowdy coat came on. Miss Collins hoped very much that she would get in with her. She even loosened the catch of the door and allowed something that was almost a smile to relax her features. And all at once there was the door opening, and just as the train began to move, the lady in black got in and settled herself in the opposite corner. As she did so she met Miss Collins’ sympathetic gaze and heard her say, “Oh dear, you very nearly missed the train!”