He paused for a moment and looked at the room—Katherine was not there. She was always until the very last moment, doing something to Grandfather’s present, tying it up in some especial ribbon, writing something on the paper wrapping, making it, in some way, more perfect. He knew that, as he came in, his mother would look up and smile and say “Well, Henry,” and then would resume her placidity, that Uncle Tim would sit down beside Aunt Betty and begin, very gently, to chaff her, which would please her immensely, and that Aunt Sarah would cry “What did you say, Timothy?” and that then he would shout down her ear-trumpet, with a good-humoured smile peeping down from his beard as though he were thinking “One must humour the old lady you know.” All these things occurred. Henry himself sat in a low chair by the fire and looked at his father, who was walking up and down the other end of the room, his hands deep in his pockets, his head back. Then he looked at his two aunts and wondered, as he had wondered so many times before, that they were not the sisters of his mother instead of his father. They were so small and fragile to be the sisters of such large-limbed, rough-and-tumble men as his father and Uncle Timothy. They would have, so naturally, taken their position in the world as the sisters of his mother. Aunt Aggie, who thought that no one was paying her very much attention, said: “I can’t think why Katherine wouldn’t let me get that silk for her at Liberty’s this afternoon. I could have gone up Regent Street so easily—it wouldn’t have been very much trouble—not very much, but Katherine always must do everything for herself.” Mrs. Trenchard said: “It was very kind of you, Aggie dear, to think of it—I’m sure it was very kind,” and Aunt Betty said: “Katherine would appreciate your thinking of her.” “I wonder, with the fog, that any of you went out at all,” said Uncle Tim, “I’m sure I was as nearly killed as nothing just coming back from the Strand.” Aunt Aggie moved her hands on her lap, looked at them, suspiciously, to see whether they meant what they said, and then sighed—and, to Henry, this all seemed to-night wonderful, magical, possessed of some thrilling, passionate quality; his heart was beating with furious, leaping bounds, his eyes were misty with sentimental happiness. He thought that this was life that he was realising now for the first time.... It was not—it was two glasses of Port.