Millie was deeply touched. "Of course I will," she said, "if I can. And you really think I can? I'm terribly ignorant and inexperienced."
"You're not so inexperienced as they are." He held out his hand. "Come to me if you're disheartened or bewildered. There'll be times when you will be. I've known these women since they were babies so I can help you."
Meanwhile Henry's plunge into a cold and hostile world was of quite another kind.
One of the deep differences between brother and sister was that while Millie was realistic Henry was romantic. He could not help but see things in a coloured light, and now when he started out for his first morning with his Baronet London was all lit up like a birthday cake. He had fallen during the last year under the spell of the very newest of the _Vers Librists_, and it had become a passion with him to find fantastic images for everything that he saw. Moreover, the ease of it all fascinated him. He was, God knows, no poet, but quite simply, without any trouble at all, lines came tumbling into his head:
The chimneys, like crimson cockatoos, Fling their grey feathers Wildly.
The washing Billowing-- Frozen egg-shells Crimson pantaloons Skyline Flutter.
The omnibuses herd together In the dirty autumn weather Elephants in jungle town Monkey-nuts come pattering down.
He got deep pleasure from these inspirations; he had sent three to an annual anthology _Hoops_, and one of them, "Railway-Lines--Bucket-shop," was to appear in the 1920 volume.
But the trouble with Henry was that cheek by jowl with this modern up-to-date impulse ran a streak of real old-fashioned, entirely out-of-date Romance. It was true, as Millie had informed Miss Platt, that he had written ten chapters of a story, _The House in the Lonely Wood_.
How desperately was he ashamed of his impulse to write this romance and yet how at the same time he loved doing it! Was ever young literary genius in a more shameful plight! A true case of double personality! With the day he pursued the path of all the young 1920 Realists, believing that nothing matters but "the Truth, the calm, cold, unaffected Truth," thrilling to the voices of the Three Graces, loving the company of the somewhat youthful editor of _Hoops_, reading every word that fell from the pen of the younger realistic critics.