The three sat there in silence. At last Millicent said:
"Isn't it queer? Here's the world on the very edge of every sort of adventure, and here are we on the very edge too? I feel in my bones that we shall go through great things this year--all of us. Unpleasant and pleasant--all sorts. I don't believe that there's ever been in all history such a time for adventure as now."
"That's true!" he cried. "And whatever happens we three will stick together. Nothing shall separate us--nothing; and nobody. You and I and Peter. We'll never let anybody come between us. We'll be the three best friends the world has ever seen!"
He caught Millie's hand. She looked up at him, smiling. He came across and caught Peter's also. Suddenly Millicent put out hers and took Peter's free one.
"You're a sentimental donkey, Henry," she said. "But there's something in what you say."
Peter flushed. "I'm older than both of you," he said, "and I'm dull and slow but I'll do what I can."
There was a knock on the door and they sprang apart. It was Mr. King to take away the tea.
Now might young Henry be considered by any observer of average intelligence to be fairly launched into the world--he is in love, he is confidential secretary to a gentleman of importance, he has written ten chapters of a romantic novel and he is living in chambers all on his own. It has been asserted again and again that the Great War of 1914 turned many thousands of boys into old men long before their time. The exact contrary may also be proved to be true--namely that the War caught many boys in their teens, held them in a sort of vise for five years, keeping them from life as it is usually lived, teaching them nothing but war and then suddenly flinging them out into a Peace about which they were as ignorant as blind puppies. Boys of eighteen chronologically supposed to be twenty-four and superficially disguised as men of forty and disillusioned cynical men at that, those were to be found in their thousands in that curious tangled year of 1920. Henry thought he was a man; he was much less a man than he would have been had no war broken out at all.
On the afternoon following the tea party just now described he left Hill Street about four o'clock, his head up and his chest out, a very fine figure indeed had it not been that, unknown to himself, his tie had stepped up to the top of his collar at the back of his neck and there was a small smudge of ink just in the right corner of his nose. He had had a very happy day, very quiet, very peaceful, and he was encouraged to believe that he had been a great success. It was true that Sir Charles had addressed very few words to himself and that Lady Bell-Hall had addressed so many during luncheon that he had felt like a canary peppered with bird-seed, but he did not expect Sir Charles to speak very often, nor did he mind how frequently the funny little woman in the bonnet spoke, so long as she liked him. It had all been very easy, and the letters had been entrancing, so entrancing that Berkeley Square seemed to be Princes Street, and he could see through the open door Sir Walter's hall and Maria Edgeworth announced and the host's cheery welcome and glorious smile, and the laughter of the children, and Maria dragged into the circle and forced to sing the Highland song with the rest of them, and Honest John hurrying down Castle Street wrapped up against the cold, and the high frosty sky and the Castle frowning over all.