“You’re different, you see, Emily.  You’re not in the least like anybody else!” Susan would say.

“But why am I different?” And if it was possible, Emily might even come over to sit on the arm of Susan’s chair, or drop on her knees and encircle Susan’s waist with her arms.

“Well, in the first place you’re terribly original, Emily, and you always say right out what you mean—­” Susan would begin.

With Ella, when she grew to know her well, Susan was really happier.  She was too honest to enjoy the part she must always play with Emily, yet too practically aware of the advantages of this new position, to risk it by frankness, and eventually follow the other companions, the governesses and trained nurses who had preceded her.  Emily characterized these departed ladies as “beasts,” and still flushed a deep resentful red when she mentioned certain ones among them.

Susan found in Ella, in the first place, far more to admire than she could in Emily.  Ella’s very size made for a sort of bigness in character.  She looked her two hundred and thirty pounds, but she looked handsome, glowing and comfortable as well.  Everything she wore was loose and dashing in effect; she was a fanatic about cleanliness and freshness, and always looked as if freshly bathed and brushed and dressed.  Ella never put on a garment, other than a gown or wrap, twice.  Sometimes a little heap of snowy, ribboned underwear was carried away from her rooms three or four times a day.

She was dictatorial and impatient and exacting, but she was witty and good-natured, too, and so extremely popular with men and women of her own age that she could have dined out three times a night.  Ella was fondly nicknamed “Mike” by her own contemporaries, and was always in demand for dinners and lunch parties and card parties.  She was beloved by the younger set, too.  Susan thought her big-sisterly interest in the debutantes very charming to see and, when she had time to remember her sister’s little companion now and then, she would carry Susan off for a drive, or send for her when she was alone for tea, and the two laughed a great deal together.  Susan could honestly admire here, and Ella liked her admiration.

Miss Saunders believed herself to be a member of the most distinguished American family in existence, and her place to be undisputed as queen of the most exclusive little social circle in the world.  She knew enough of the social sets of London and Washington and New York society to allude to them casually and intimately, and she told Susan that no other city could boast of more charming persons than those who composed her own particular set in San Francisco.  Ella never spoke of “society” without intense gravity; nothing in life interested her so much as the question of belonging or not belonging to it.  To her personally, of course, it meant nothing; she had been born inside the charmed ring, and would die there; but the status of other persons filled her with concern.  She was very angry when her mother or Emily showed any wavering in this all-important matter.