“You know, I like you—and I don’t often like modern young men. I wouldn’t mind you at all as a son-in-law, and you’d suit me as a son much better than Henry does. At least I think so, but then I know you very slightly, and I may dislike you intensely later on. We none of us know you, you see. We never had anybody drop in upon us as you did.... It doesn’t seem to me a bit like Katherine—and I don’t suppose she knows you any better than the rest of us do. _She_ mayn’t like you later on. I can’t say that marriage is going to be what you think it is. You’re very unsettling. You won’t keep quiet and take things easily, and Katherine is sure not to like that. She’s as quiet as anything.... If it were Millie now. I suppose you wouldn’t care to have Millie instead? she’d suit you much better. Then, you know, the family won’t like your doing it. My wife won’t like it.” He paused, then, standing, his legs wide apart, his hands deep in his pockets, roared with laughter: “It _will_ disturb them all—not that it won’t be good for them perhaps. You’re not to think though that I’ve given my consent—at any rate you’re not to marry her for a long time until we see what you’re like. I’m not to give her just to anyone who comes along, you know. I rather wish you’d stayed in Russia. It’s very unsettling.” The door opened—Katherine entered. She looked at Philip, smiled, then came across to her father and put her arm through his. She said nothing, but was radiant; her father felt her hand tremble as it touched his, and that suddenly moved him as, perhaps, nothing had ever moved him before. “Do you want to marry him?” he asked. “Yes,” she answered. “But you hardly know him.” “I know him very well indeed,” she said, looking at Philip’s eyes. “But I don’t want you to marry anyone,” her father went on. “We were all very nice as we were.... What’ll you do if I say you’re not to marry him?” “You won’t say that,” she answered, smiling at him. “What do you want to marry him for?” he asked. “He’s just an ordinary young man. You don’t know him,” he repeated, “you can’t yet, you’ve seen so little of him. Then you’ll upset us all here very much—it will be very unpleasant for everybody. Do you really think it’s worth it?” Katherine laughed. “I don’t think I can help it, father,” she answered. Deep in Trenchard’s consciousness was the conviction, very common to men of good digestion over fifty, that had he been God he would have managed the affairs of the world very agreeably for everybody. He had not, often, been in the position of absolute power, but that was because he had not often taken the trouble to come out of his comfortable shelter and see what people were doing. He felt now that he could be Jove for a quarter of an hour without any discomfort to himself—a very agreeable feeling.