.
We can't help it anyway. You and I aren't attracted to Jean, but there's
no use denying most people are. And what's more, they keep on liking
her. She isn't a person people get easily tired of. I wish I knew her
secret. I suppose it is charm--a thing that can't be acquired."

"What nonsense, Muriel! I wonder to hear you. I'd like to know who has
charm if you haven't. It is a silly word anyway."

Muriel shook her head. "It's no good posing when we are by ourselves. As
a family we totally lack charm. Minnie tries to make up for it by a
great deal of manner and a loud voice. Gordon--well, it doesn't matter
so much for a man, but you can see his friends don't really care about
him much. They take his hospitality and say he isn't a bad sort. They
know he is a snob, and when he tries to be funny he is often offensive,
poor Gordon! I've got a pretty face, and I play games well, so I am
tolerated, but I have hardly one real friend. The worst of it is I know
all the time where I am falling short, and I can't help it. I feel
myself jar on people. I once heard old Mrs. Hope say that it doesn't
matter how vulgar we are, so long as we know we are being vulgar. But
that isn't true. It's not much fun to know you are being vulgar and not
be able to help it."

Mrs. Duff-Whalley gave a convulsed ejaculation, but her daughter went
on.

"Sometimes I've gone in of an afternoon to see Jean, and found her
darning stockings in her shabby frock, with a look on her face as if she
knew some happy secret; a sort of contented, brooding look--and I've
envied her. And so I talked of all the gaieties I was going to, of the
new clothes I was getting, of the smart people we know, and all the time
I was despising myself for a fool, for what did Jean care! She sat there
with her mind full of books and poetry and those boys she is so absurdly
devoted to; it was nothing to her how much I bucked; and this fortune
won't change her. Money is nothing--"

Mrs. Duff-Whalley gasped despairingly to hear her cherished daughter
talking, as she thought, rank treason.

"Oh, Muriel, how you can! And your poor father working so hard to make a
pile so that we could all be nice and comfortable. And you were his
favourite, and I've often thought how proud he would have been to see
his little girl so smart and pretty and able to hold her own with the
best of them. And I've worked too. Goodness knows I've worked hard. It
isn't as easy as it looks to keep your end up