She let him put her hand on his arm, and felt restful, after the greetings had been exchanged, as he led her out to the big touring car, asking her all sorts of eager questions about how she found her home and her friends, and if the journey had fatigued her, and telling her, over and over, how good she looked, how bright and how clear-eyed and how fresh-cheeked, and how charming in her grey travelling costume. She felt the thrill again as he took her hand in his to help her into the car, and she loved the masterful manner in which he cleared a way to their machine through the crowded traffic. In the same masterful air, he gently but firmly changed her from the little folding seat to the big soft cushions in the rear, beside her Aunt Grace.
The Reverend Smith Boyd was at the steps of the Sargent house to greet her, and her heart leaped as she recognised another of the dear familiar faces. This was her world, after all; not that world of her childhood. How different the rector looked; or was it that she had needed to go away in order to judge her friends anew? His eyes were different; deeper, steadier and more penetrating into her own; and, yes, bolder. She was forced to look away from them for a moment. There seemed a warm eagerness in his greeting, as if everything in him were drawing her to him. It was indescribable, that change in the Reverend Smith Boyd, but it was not unexplainable; and, after he had swung back home, with the earnest promise to come over after dinner, she suddenly blushed furiously, without any cause, while she was talking of nothing more intense than the excellent physical condition of Flakes.
Gay little Mrs. Babbitt brought her husband, while the family group was still jabbering over its coffee, and after them came the deluge; Dick Rodley and the cherub-cheeked Marion Kenneth, and Willis Cunningham, and a host of others, including the Van Ploons, father, son, and solemn daughter. The callow youth who had danced with her three times was there, with a gardenia all out of proportion to him, and he sat in the middle of the Louis XIV salon, where he was excessively in everybody’s road, and could feast on Gail, for the most of the evening, in numb admiration; for his point of vantage commanded a view into the library and all the parlours.