Adelaide was still in bed, but one long, pointed fingertip, pressed continuously upon the dangling bell, a summons that had long since lost its poignancy for the temperamental Lucie, indicated that she was about to get up.
"My dear," she said in answer to Mathilde's question, "your grandfather's principal interest seems to be to tell me nothing at all, and he has been wonderfully successful.

I can get nothing from him, so I'm going myself." The girl's heart sank at hearing this.

Her mother saw things clearly and definitely, and had a talent for expressing her impressions in unforgetable words.

Mathilde could still remember with a pang certain books, poems, pictures, and even people whose charms her mother had destroyed in one poisonous phrase.

Adelaide was too careful of her personal dignity to indulge in mimicry, but she had a way of catching and repeating the exact phrasing of some foolish sentence that was almost better--or worse--than mimicry.