“I liked that,” said Claire, softly. Her eyes were tearful. Almost every tune that she knows very well indeed will bring tears to her eyes, by rousing associations with a past that she always rates higher than she does the present. “She doesn’t look like the sort of person to sing that sort of song,” analyzed Sallie Ambrey. “She looks hard.” “She looks unhappy,” said Mary. Christopher leaned forward. “Who is Mrs. Harter?” “A girl called Diamond Ellison--old Ellison’s daughter. She married and went out to the East a few years ago.” “It’s a pity she looked so bad-tempered all the time she was singing,” observed Dolly Kendal. “Good-looking woman,” General Kendal muttered, and Mrs. Kendal, Claire, Sallie, and Aileen Kendal all said, “Oh, do you think so?” in tones implying surprise, or disagreement, or both. But Nancy Fazackerly agreeably said, “Yes, isn’t she?” after her fashion. But when Mumma in the interval remarked, weightily, “That Mrs. Harter may be a good singer, but she’s a very plain woman,” I distinctly heard Nancy Fazackerly, ever obliging, say, “Yes, isn’t she?” all over again. Captain Patch, like Christopher Ambrey, asked who Mrs. Harter was, and said that he would like to hear her sing again. “If we can persuade Father--who is sometimes a wee bit inclined to be conservative, as you may have noticed--we will have a musical evening and ask Diamond Harter to come,” said Nancy Fazackerly, who has learned nothing from life and the late Mr. Fazackerly if not complaisance. “I’m sure Sallie and Martyn would come--and Major Ambrey?” She looked at Christopher. “I’d like it very much,” he said. “I can play accompaniments, and we could have some songs, and it would be so nice,” said Nancy eagerly. Her obvious capacity for enjoyment, taken in conjunction with the very few and poor opportunities of gratifying it that have ever fallen to her lot, struck me as rather pathetic. I heard her give her invitation to Mrs. Harter at the end of the concert, as we were all leaving the hall together. Mrs. Harter, who did not appear to be an enthusiastic person, accepted curtly. Her voice was low, and had not the intonation of good breeding, and when she passed under the flaring lights at the end of the room I saw that the sulky lines of her face had hardly relaxed at all. “Thank you, I don’t mind if I do,” was all that she said before walking away. “What an ungracious manner, and how typical of her class! I said she was common,” Claire observed when Mrs. Harter had disappeared. “I think she’s shy.” Nancy Fazackerly is always ready to sacrifice truth to kindliness, as we all know. Perhaps it is the effect of having successively known a father and a husband, both of whom appear to have lived in a chronic state of annoyance with everybody. “It was a nice concert, wasn’t it?” she added, with her childlike appreciation of any form of pleasuring.