Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress.  Florence junior, in passionate argument with the butler over the death of one of the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs.  Mrs. Haviland, casting the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed, took a new embroidered pongee from a box, and busied herself with its unfamiliar hooks and straps.  Charlotte and Isabelle were never quite spontaneous in their conversations with their mother, their attitude in talking with her being one of alert and cautious self-consciousness; they did not breathe quite naturally, and they laughed constantly.  Yet they both loved this big, firm, omnipotent being, and believed in her utterly and completely.

“We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning, M’ma,” volunteered Isabelle.

“And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch’s dance,” Charlotte added with a little innocent craft.  “But I said that M’ma had been unable to decide.  Of course I said that we would like to go, and that you knew that, and would allow it if you possibly could.”

“That was quite right, dear,” Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle she added kindly:  “M’ma doesn’t quite like to hear you calling a young man you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle.  Of course, there’s no harm in it, but it cheapens a girl just a little.  While Charlotte might do it because she is older, and has seen Charlie Gregory at some of the little informal affairs last winter, you are younger, and haven’t really seen much of him since he went to college.  Don’t let M’ma hear you do that again.”

Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and was silent.  The younger girl’s shamed eyes met her mother’s, and she nodded in quick embarrassment.  But this tacit consent did not satisfy Mrs. Haviland.

“You understand M’ma, don’t you, dear?” she asked.  Isabelle murmured something indistinguishable.

“Yes, M’ma!” said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly.  Isabelle duly echoed a husky “Yes, M’ma!”

“Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?” pursued the matron.

“She wasn’t at church, M’ma,” said Charlotte, taken unawares and instinctively uneasy.  “Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she said she’d been sleeping on the sleeping porch.”

“So M’ma’s message was forgotten?” the mother asked pleasantly.

Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous position.  Long ago both girls had lost, under this close surveillance and skilful system of cross-examination, their original regard for truth as truth.  That they usually said what was true was because policy and self-protection suggested it.  Charlotte had time now for a flying survey of the situation and its possibilities before she answered, somewhat uncertainly: