Grace Cardew kissed her, and then held her off and looked at her.

“Mercy, Lily!” she said, “you look as old as I do.”

“Older, I hope,” Lily retorted.  “What a marvel you are, Grace dear.”  Now and then she called her mother “Grace.”  It was by way of being a small joke between them, but limited to their moments alone.  Once old Anthony, her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row about it.

“I feel horribly old, but I didn’t think I looked it.”

They got into the car and Grace held out the box to her.  “From your father, dear.  He wanted so to come, but things are dreadful at the mill.  I suppose you’ve seen the papers.”  Lily opened the box, and smiled at her mother.

“Yes, I know.  But why the subterfuge about the flowers, mother dear?  Honestly, did he send them, or did you get them?  But never mind about that; I know he’s worried, and you’re sweet to do it.  Have you broken the news to grandfather that the last of the Cardews is coming home?”

“He sent you all sorts of messages, and he’ll see you at dinner.”

Lily laughed out at that.

“You darling!” she said.  “You know perfectly well that I am nothing in grandfather’s young life, but the Cardew women all have what he likes to call savoir faire.  What would they do, father and grandfather, if you didn’t go through life smoothing things for them?”

Grace looked rather stiffly ahead.  This young daughter of hers, with her directness and her smiling ignoring of the small subterfuges of life, rather frightened her.  The terrible honesty of youth!  All these years of ironing the wrinkles out of life, of smoothing the difficulties between old Anthony and Howard, and now a third generation to contend with.  A pitilessly frank and unconsciously cruel generation.  She turned and eyed Lily uneasily.

“You look tired,” she said, “and you need attention.  I wish you had let me send Castle to you.”

But she thought that lily was even lovelier than she had remembered her.  Lovely rather than beautiful, perhaps.  Her face was less childish than when she had gone away; there was, in certain of her expressions, an almost alarming maturity.  But perhaps that was fatigue.

“I couldn’t have had Castle, mother.  I didn’t need anything.  I’ve been very happy, really, and very busy.”

“You have been very vague lately about your work.”

Lily faced her mother squarely.

“I didn’t think you’d much like having me do it, and I thought it would drive grandfather crazy.”

“I thought you were in a canteen.”

“Not lately.  I’ve been looking after girls who had followed soldiers to camps.  Some of them were going to have babies, too.  It was rather awful.  We married quite a lot of them, however.”

The curious reserve that so often exists between mother and daughter held Grace Cardew dumb.  She nodded, but her eyes had slightly hardened.  So this was what war had done to her.  She had had no son, and had thanked God for it during the war, although old Anthony had hated her all her married life for it.  But she had given her daughter, her clear-eyed daughter, and they had shown her the dregs of life.