"They're worldly as a lot, the whole family. In their efforts to make Adele into what she'll never successfully be, a fashionable daughter, they're only making her awkward. See how she shows she's got elbows."
But of the group of young people down there at the gate Amanthus Harrison was the lovely one. With her cascading, scintillant, positively effulgent hair, amazing skin, laughing eyes, laughing cheeks, laughing lips, she was a radiant creature.
"Amanthus laughs like my flowers in the backyard blow," said Auntie, "she hasn't an idea why she laughs."
"She doesn't need to have," said Mrs. Wistar promptly and astutely. "You ask any man and he'd tell you that an idea would spoil her."
"She's popular," reflected Auntie.
"That's what I'm saying," impatiently. "And her mother is pretty and popular before her."
"And enjoys it," from Auntie. "I've often wondered she hasn't married again. I wish Selina wouldn't think it so much the proper thing to be bookish, Lavinia," a little anxiously, "and to strew magazines around the house so. It isn't as if she actually reads them."
"Selina is quite as popular as she needs to be," said her mother quickly. "She doesn't lack for masculine friends."
"You don't have to take that tone to me, Lavinia," said Auntie sharply. "Nobody has to defend Selina from me."
Here the four friends of Selina down there at the gate embraced her with a sudden rush and ardor.