The children played together downstairs while Isabelle discussed with Alice some business matters. It had not sounded very lively below, and when the mothers came down they found Molly and Belle sitting on opposite sides of the little parlor, looking stiffly at each other. The boys had slipped off for more stirring adventures outdoors, which Molly had refused to join, as she was making a formal call with her mother. In the motor going home Molly remarked: "The boys haven't good manners. Belle seems a nice girl. She hasn't been anywhere and can't talk. That was a very homely dress she had on; don't you think so? Does she have to wear dresses like that? Can't you give her something prettier, mamma?"
Isabelle, who thought her god-daughter an interesting child, full of independence and vitality in spite of her shyness, wondered, "Is Molly just a stick, or only a little snob?"
Molly was sitting very gracefully in her grandmother's limousine, riding through the parks and avenues with the air of a perfect little lady accustomed to observe the world from the cushioned seat of a brougham or motor-car. Catching sight of a bill board with the announcement of a popular young actress's coming engagement, she remarked:—
"Miss Daisy May is such a perfect dear, don't you think, mamma? Couldn't Miss Joyce take me to see her act next Saturday afternoon? It's a perfectly nice play, you know."
Repressing a desire to shake her daughter, Isabelle replied: "I'll take you myself, Molly. And shan't we invite Delia Conry? You know she is at school here and has very few friends."
"Oh!" Molly said thoughtfully. "Delia is so ordinary. I should like to ask Beatrice Lawton,—Miss Joyce knows her governess…. Or if we must be good to some one, we might take Belle."
"We'll take them both."
"I don't think Beatrice would enjoy Belle," her daughter objected after further reflection.
"Well, I shall ask Delia and Belle, then, to go with me alone!"
(She had looked up the Conry child at the school where Vickers had sent her, and had arranged to have her brother's small estate settled on the girl, as she felt he would have wished. Delia, whose mother had never been heard from, was a forlorn little object and Isabelle pitied her.)