"I suppose you're Dolly," she said in her deep warm voice, and held out an open hand.
Dolly, like most young people, estimated beauty as the best of gifts.
She might have been almost as much captured by Pearl's as her brother had been, except that her ego was taken up with the outrage of her being kept waiting--she, the most important person in the house, who had taken the trouble not only to order dinner on time but--what did not always happen--to be on time herself.
She rose, and allowing a limp hand to pass rapidly through Miss Exeter's, she said, "Do let's go in to dinner, mother."
"Yes, indeed," said her mother, coming in rapidly from the piazza. "We dine at eight, Miss Exeter. Another evening I'm sure you will be on time."
This was not perhaps a very terrible beginning to a régime of sternness; but to Durland, just getting down, it appeared one of the most disgusting exhibitions of slave driving that he had ever heard.
"It is entirely my fault that we are late," he said, giving his mother a steady, brave look.
She answered irrelevantly, "Why, Durland, how nice you look!