“My,” she vowed, wide-mouthed for the leisurely vowel, “it’s Miss Halland.” Americans! Then perhaps the other girl merely had neuralgia. Miss Holland had turned, and Miriam saw her swift disclaiming glance and its change into the shy but brightly charmed and charming smile, accompanying the greeting that was yet so formal and in its apologetic disdainfulness so like her voice. She was hidden now behind the tall white figures. Their voices, playing about her and expanding into the room, killed Miriam’s interest. There was, for her, something in the American voice that robbed its communications of any depth of meaning. The very ease of their talk, its expressiveness, the direct swift way they handled their stores of information and communicated their thoughts, made even the most fascinating topics fall dead, rifled of essential significance. 9 Her stranded attention was caught by the sound of blended voices approaching from the door. Voices in the midst of talk, having come into the room talking, but not in the least in the English way of making conversation to cover an entry. They were in full swing, their sentences overlapping. Obviously noticing nothing and no one. They were using the club as a place to talk in, and were one voice. Sisters or cousins. Yet they had arranged themselves in chairs without breaking their talk, which went forward so eagerly that they seemed to be exchanging opinions for the first time. Now where had she heard, between sisters, exactly that effect? Somewhere between members of a large family that formed a society in itself? No, the three Bannerman girls, just three, no more, living in seclusion with their parents, marching about all over Barnes for years, in perpetual conversation in high, rapid voices.... They had suddenly appeared at the church decorations, keeping it up even there, amongst themselves. Speaking to no one else. Being really interested, but somehow conveying their conviction that the people all around them were too stupid even to be noticed. They had accepted work politely, making clever comments without looking at those who instructed them, and then sat there with quickly moving fingers and a ceaseless fretting of voices. Always one shape of tone: beginning on a refined argumentative switchback of sound. Harriett had caught it, taking them off, for days. “Isn’t it verray re_mar_kable, my dear Miriam, that such a singularly tall man as Mr. Spiffkins should be a radical?” “Don’t you, my dear Miriam, consider it highly alarming that rain falls _down_ instead of up?”