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 ‘all body.’  In regard to that characteristic of Becket, not even Felix in his ironies had ever stood up to Clara; the matter was too delicate.  Frances Freeland, indeed—­not because she had any philosophic preconceptions on the matter, but because it was ‘not nice, dear, to be wasteful’ even if it were only of rose-leaves, or to ‘have too much decoration,’ such as Japanese prints in places where they hum—­sometimes told her daughter-in-law frankly what was wrong, without, however, making the faintest impression upon Clara, for she was not sensitive, and, as she said to Stanley, it was ’only Mother.’

When they had drunk that special Chinese tea, all the rage, but which no one really liked, in the inner morning, or afternoon room—­for the drawing-rooms were too large to be comfortable except at week-ends—­they went to see the children, a special blend of Stanley and Clara, save the little Francis, who did not seem to be entirely body.  Then Clara took them to their rooms.  She lingered kindly in Nedda’s, feeling that the girl could not yet feel quite at home, and looking in the soap-dish lest she might not have the right verbena, and about the dressing-table to see that she had pins and scent, and plenty of ‘pot-pourri,’ and thinking:  ‘The child is pretty—­a nice girl, not like her mother.’  Explaining carefully how, because of the approaching week-end, she had been obliged to put her in ‘a very simple room’ where she would be compelled to cross the corridor to her bath, she asked her if she had a quilted dressing-gown, and finding that she had not, left her saying she would send one—­and could she do her frocks up, or should Sirrett come?