George was too short, and beside Guy and Hugo he looked still shorter. He had grey eyes, not dark romantic grey like Guy and Cousin Delia, but an ordinary blue grey colour, and his hair was mouse colour, rather fair than dark. He had a broad forehead and very straight eyebrows, rather close over his eyes. He was not at all what I had expected.
Of Mollie I had heard less, but I liked her as soon as she spoke. She had a pretty voice, very sweet, and like herself.
She struck me as much bigger than George. I believe she was actually about an inch taller, but she had the same forehead and level eyebrows and grey eyes. These straight brows were characteristic of them both. Her hair was fairer than his, and there was more colour in her face. It has often puzzled me to define why Mollie was not pretty. Her features were well cut and even, and her colouring very pleasant, yet she did not strike one as pretty. One got to love her face and her charming, rather boyish smile, but with both her and George you did not see at first how special they were. Some people never saw, and that used to make me angry.
She was dressed in blue that afternoon. I think it was a blue homespun. I know it seemed just the right colour in that room.
I made the tea in the coloured teapot, and we all sat round the fire and had tea.
Later Mrs. Peters came in. She had to be there as a chaperone, or Mollie would not have been allowed to come. I thought they were joking when they said this, but it was true. It seemed to me a funny idea.
II
Mollie and George Addington had no parents. Their mother had died when they were tiny children and their father when Mollie was sixteen. He had been in business in Manchester; a cotton business of some sort, and they were brought up in a suburb of Manchester, in a big ugly red house a few miles out of the town. Mollie once showed me some photographs of their house, and it seemed to me odd that George and Mollie should come from a place like that. It was not like them at all. They were rather rich and had a motor-car long before every one did. Their father was interested in politics, and a Liberal. He used to read articles from the Manchester Guardian aloud to them in the evenings, and later on when they were older they used to read them to him. It was chiefly Mollie that did the reading; imports and exports and rates of exchange. I asked Mollie once if she had hated all that reading aloud, and she looked surprised.
‘No—not particularly,’ she said. ‘It never occurred to me to hate it, and I was sorry for Father.’
Mollie went to a High School in Manchester. She went in by train with her father in the mornings, and came back alone after tea.