His father was fatter, yes, a lot fatter. He had been a jolly-looking man once. Running to seed. . . . He'd die too, one day. They'd all die . . . all . . . himself. Die? _What_ was it? _Where_ was it?
"Oh yes, we like Long-Masterman very much, thank you, Millie dear. It suits Aggie's health excellently. You really should come down one day--only I suppose you're so busy."
"Yes indeed." Aunt Aggie's old familiar snort. "Millie always _was_ too busy for her poor old Aunts."
How disagreeable Aunt Aggie was and how little people changed although you might pretend. . . . But he felt that he was changing all the time. Suppose he wasn't changing at all? Oh, but that was absurd! How different the man who sat out in the garden at Duncombe from the boy who, at that very table, had sat after dinner on Grandfather's table looking for sugared cherries? Really different? . . . But, of course. . . . Yes, but really?
Aunt Aggie stood up. "I really don't know what we're all sitting round this table for. They'll send for us if anything happens. I'm sure poor Harriet wouldn't want us to be uncomfortable."
"How quiet the house is!" Millie gave a little shiver. "Poor mother! I wish I felt it more. I suppose I shall afterwards."
"It's what people always call a 'happy release,'" said Henry. "It really has been awful for her these last years. When I went up to see her a few weeks ago her eyes were terrible."
"Poor mother," Millie repeated again. They were silent for a little, then Millie said: "You know, I've been thinking all the evening what Peter once said to us about our being enchanted--because we are young. There's something awfully true about it. When things are at their very worst--when I'm having the most awful row with Bunny or Victoria's more tiresome than you can imagine--although I say to myself, 'I'm perfectly miserable,' I'm not really because there's something behind it all that I'm enjoying hugely. I wouldn't miss a moment of it. I want every scrap. It is _like_ an enchantment really. I suppose I'll wake up soon."
"I feel it too. And I feel as though it must all have its climax in some wonderful adventure that's coming to me. An adventure that I shall remember all the rest of my life. It seems silly, after the War, talking of adventures, but the War was too awful for one to dare to talk about oneself in connection with it, although it was immensely personal all the time. But we're out of the War now and back in life again, and if I can keep that sense of magic I have now, nothing can hurt me. The whole of life will be an adventure."