When they met at breakfast a few minutes later, they said good morning as though they hadn’t seen each other before. In the midst of their family, the brother and sister had from childhood maintained a sort of Secret Society. Their two minds, critical and inquiring from the first, had early found themselves in tune with each other and out of tune with the rest. When Judy looked back on her childhood and girlhood, it always seemed to her to be streaked with light and dark spots. The light spots were Noel’s vacations, and the times when they were together, and the dark spots were the long school terms, and—darkest spot of all—his absence at the war. But even as a child the joy of having him with her was always faintly shadowed by the fear of some day not having him. For years she had said to herself:
“If I could only love some one else as much as I do Noel, then fate would have a choice of two marks.”
And if the other members of the family objected to the brother and sister’s marked preference for each other’s society, they kept it to themselves remarkably well.
The Pendletons always had family prayers. Mrs. Pendleton insisted on them less from conviction than for the reason that all the other Pendletons had them, and she believed they had a good effect on the servants. So the entire household assembled in the dining room at a quarter to nine, and if any one was late, he or she was waited for. This morning Gordon was late, but when he was the offender, nothing was said.
Mr. Pendleton officiated. He was a little man, with what the Pendletons chose to call a handsome nose. Most people thought it merely large. His face barely escaped being intellectual, but something narrow about the forehead and peevish about the mouth, spoiled the effect. Noel looked the most like him, but Noel’s forehead and mouth had what his father’s lacked. Fortunately he took after his mother in the matter of height, for Millie was a good five inches taller than her husband. In her large, charmless way she was handsome, and had regular and uninteresting features. It was difficult to see in Judy the least trace of likeness to either of her parents, while Gordon, on the contrary, was the image of his mother, and she idolized him. She was prepared, too, to find in Helen, when she became his wife, all that she found lacking in Judy.
Prayers over, breakfast immediately followed. It was usually a quiet meal, enlivened only by excursions after food, and the rustle of newspapers. But this morning there was an uncommon amount of talk. It went as follows:
Mr. Pendleton: “Gordon, I hope you haven’t forgotten you are lunching with Sir William to-day at his club.”
Gordon: “No, father. I hadn’t forgotten. Won’t you be there too?”
Mr. Pendleton: “Unfortunately, it is not possible. I have a very trying day ahead of me.” (Mr. Pendleton was a barrister, but his large income made work less a necessity than a hobby.)
Millie: “I shall be glad when the summer comes, John, and you can take a holiday. By the way, I wish you’d all make up your minds where you want to go this year.”