“Sorry,” said Philip. “Got an engagement. Very important—” The lady, however, had suddenly recognised an old friend. “Why, Charlie!” Henry heard her say: “Who ever ...” They sat down on a sofa near the bar and watched the group. Henry was thinking: “He spoke to her as though he had known her all his life....” He was suddenly aware that he and his father and mother and aunts, yes, and Katherine too were babies compared with Philip. “Why, they don’t know anything about him. Katherine doesn’t know anything really....” He watched the women who passed him; he watched their confidential whispers with gentlemen who all seemed to have red faces and bulging necks. He watched two old men with their hats cocked to one side; they had faces like dusty strawberries, and they wore white gloves and carried silver-topped canes. They didn’t speak, and nothing moved in their faces except their eyes. He watched a woman who was angry and a man who was apologetic. He watched a girl in a simple black dress who stood with grave, waiting eyes. She suddenly smiled a welcome to someone, but the smile was hard, practised, artificial, as though she had fastened it on like a mask. Philip belonged to these people; he knew their ways, their talk, their etiquette, their tragedies and comedies. Henry stared at him, at his gaze, rather uninterested and tired. (Philip, at that moment, was thinking of Katherine, of the bore that her young brother was: he was remembering the last time that she had kissed him, of her warm cheek against his, of a little laugh that she had given, a laugh of sheer happiness, of trusting, confident delight.) Henry sat there, frightened, thrilled, shocked, proud, indignant and terribly inquisitive. “I’m beginning to know about life. Already I know more than they do at home.” Two boys who must have been younger than he passed him; they were smart, shining, scornful. They had the derisive, incurious gaze of old men, and also the self-assertive swagger of very young ones. Henry, as he looked at them, knew that he was a babe in arms compared with them; but it seemed to him to-night that all his family was still in the cradle. “Why, even father,” he thought, “if you brought him here I don’t believe he’d know what to say or do.”