On the whole it was rather an uncomfortable dinner, as dinners go. There was a sense of misfit about it. There were just enough people at cross-purposes to give a feeling of strain, a feeling felt most strongly by Eddy, who had perceptions, and particularly wanted the evening to be a success. Even Molly and he had somehow come up against something, a rock below the cheerful, friendly stream of their intercourse, that pulled him up, though he didn’t understand what it was. There was a spiritual clash somewhere, between nearly every two of them. Between him and Molly it was all her doing; he had never felt friendlier; it was she who had put up a queer, vague wall. He could not see into her mind, so he didn’t bother about it much but went on being cheerful and friendly. They were all happier after dinner, when playing the pianola in the hall and dancing to it. But on the whole the evening was only a moderate success. The Bellairs’ told their parents afterwards that they didn’t much care about the friends Eddy had staying. “_I_ believe they’re stuck up,” said Dick (the Guards), who hadn’t been at dinner, but had met them tobogganing. “That man Denison’s for ever trying to be clever. I can’t stand that; it’s such beastly bad form. Don’t think he succeeds, either, if you ask me. I can’t see it’s particularly clever to be always sneering at things one knows nothing about. Can’t think why Eddy likes him. He’s not a bit keen on the things Eddy’s keen on--hunting, or shooting, or games, or soldiering.” “There are lots like him at Oxford,” said Claude. “I know the type. Balliol’s full of it. Awfully unwholesome, and a great bore to meet. They write things, and admire each other’s. I suppose it’s the same at Cambridge. Only I should have thought Eddy would have kept out of the way of it.” Claude had been disgusted by what he considered Arnold’s rudeness to Daphne. “I thought Mrs. Le Moine seemed rather nice, though,” he added. “Well, I must say,” Nevill said, “she was a little too much for me. English Home Rulers are bad enough, but at least they know nothing about it and are usually merely silly; but Irish ones are more than I can stand. Eddy told me afterwards that her father was that fellow Conolly, who runs the _Hibernian_--the most disloyal rag that ever throve in a Dublin gutter. It does more harm than any other paper in Ireland, I believe. What can you expect of his daughter, let alone a woman married to a disreputable play-writer, and not even living with him? I rather wonder Mrs. Oliver likes to have her in the house with Daphne.” “Miss--what d’you call her--Morning--seemed harmless, but a little off it,” said Dick. “She doesn’t talk too much, anyhow, like Denison. Queer things she wears, though. And she doesn’t know much about London, for a person who lives there, I must say. Doesn’t seem to have seen any of the plays. Rather vague, somehow, she struck me as being.”