Sallie is a year younger, a medical student at London University.
Neither of them has ever been heard to utter the words “I’m sorry” after hurting anyone’s feelings. Claire noted this long ago—but she has never realized that it is simply because they are not sorry that they omit the use of the time-honored formula.
They are both of them clever and both of them good-looking. But I often find it strange that they should be Mary Ambrey’s children.
She, too, is clever and good-looking, but in thinking of her one substitutes other adjectives. Mary is gifted, sensitive, intelligent, gracious, and beautiful, and pre-eminently well bred.
The description reminds me of the game we called “Sallie’s game” that she invented last summer. It was that afternoon, incidentally, on which I first heard Mrs. Harter’s name.
The Ambreys had come up to the Manor House on the first day of the long vacation. There was the slight constraint that is always perceptible when Claire is present, unless she is being made the center of the conversation. One felt the involuntary chafing of her spirit.
After tea, she suddenly suggested that we should play paper games.
“I’ve invented a new paper game,” Sallie said, joyously, her eyes dancing. “It’s called Portraits, and there are two ways of playing it. Either we each write down five adjectives applicable to some person we all know, and then guess whom it’s meant for, or else we all agree on the same person and then write the portraits and compare them.”
(“This,” thought I, “is the sort of game that ends in at least one member of the party getting up and leaving the room, permanently offended.”)
“Let’s try it,” said Claire, eagerly.