Upstairs in the drawing-room it was still fairly light, but the backs of
the grey houses opposite and the groups of ghostly trees that filmed the
leaden air seemed to call for curtains to be drawn across the
contemplation of their melancholy. Yet before they sat down by the
crackling fire, Michael and Lily stood with their cheeks against the
cold window-panes in a luxury of bodeful silence.

"No, you're not to sit so close now," Lily ordained, when by a joint
impulse they turned to inhabit the room in which they had been standing.
Michael saw a large photograph album and seized it.

"No, you're not to look in that," Lily cried.

"Why not?" he asked, holding it high above his head.

"Because I don't want you to," said Lily. "Put it down."

"I want to see if there are any photographs of you when you were a kid."

"Well, I don't want you to see them," Lily persisted.

In the middle of a struggle for possession of the album, Mrs. Haden and
Doris came in, and Michael felt rather foolish.

"What a dreadfully noisy girl you are, Lily," said Mrs. Haden. "And is
this your friend Mr. Fane? How d'ye do?"

"I'm afraid it was my fault," said Michael. "I was trying to bag the
photograph album."

"Oh, Lily hates anyone to see that picture of her," Doris interposed.
"She's so conceited, and just because----"

"Shut up, you beast," cried Lily.

"Her legs----"

"Doris!" interposed Mrs. Haden. "You must remember you're grown up now."

"Mother, can't I burn the photograph?" said Lily.

"No, she's not to, mother," Doris interrupted. "She's not to, is she?
You jealous thing. You'd love to burn it because it's good of me."

"Well, really," said Mrs. Haden, "what Mr. Fane can be thinking of you
two girls, I shouldn't like to guess."

The quarrel over the album died down as easily as it had begun, and the
entrance of the tea adjusted the conversation to a less excited plane.

Mrs. Haden was a woman whom Michael could not help liking for her open
breezy manner and a certain large-handed toleration which suited her
loud deep voice. But he was inclined to deprecate her obviously dyed
hair and the plentifulness of pink powder; nor could he at first detect
in her any likeness to Lily who, though Mrs. Haden persistently
reproached her as a noisy girl, stood for Michael as the slim embodiment
of a subtle and easy tranquillity. Gradually, however, during the
afternoon he perceived slight resemblances between the mother and
daught