The car had swerved into a long drive between trees not yet full-grown,
but decorously trying to look more than their twenty years. To the
right, about a group of older elms, rooks were in commotion, for
Stanley's three keepers' wives had just baked their annual rook pies,
and the birds were not yet happy again. Those elms had stood there when
the old Moretons walked past them through corn-fields to church of a
Sunday. Away on the left above the lake, the little walled mound had
come in view. Something in Felix always stirred at sight of it, and,
squeezing Nedda's arm, he said:

"See that silly wall? Behind there Granny's ancients lived. Gone
now--new house--new lake--new trees--new everything."

But he saw from his little daughter's calm eyes that the sentiment in
him was not in her.

"I like the lake," she said. "There's Granny--oh, and a peacock!"

His mother's embrace, with its frail energy, and the pressure of her
soft, dry lips, filled Felix always with remorse. Why could he not give
the simple and direct expression to his feeling that she gave to hers?
He watched those lips transferred to Nedda, heard her say: "Oh, my
darling, how lovely to see you! Do you know this for midge-bites?" A
hand, diving deep into a pocket, returned with a little silver-coated
stick having a bluish end. Felix saw it rise and hover about Nedda's
forehead, and descend with two little swift dabs. "It takes them away at
once."

"Oh, but Granny, they're not midge-bites; they're only from my hat!"

"It doesn't matter, darling; it takes away anything like that."

And he thought: 'Mother is really wonderful!'

At the house the car had already disgorged their luggage. Only one man,
but he absolutely the butler, awaited them, and they entered, at once
conscious of Clara's special pot-pourri. Its fragrance steamed from blue
china, in every nook and crevice, a sort of baptism into luxury. Clara
herself, in the outer morning-room, smelled a little of it. Quick and
dark of eye, capable, comely, perfectly buttoned, one of those women who
know exactly how not to be superior to the general taste of the period.
In addition to that great quality she was endowed with a fine nose, an
instinct for co-ordination not to be excelled, and a genuine love of
making people comfortable; so that it was no wonder that she had risen
in the ranks of hostesses, till her house was celebrated for its ease,
even among those who at their week-ends liked to feel '