_Evangeline_. Her upright body, her lifted, delicately obstinate,
rather wistful face expressed her small, conscious determination to be
good. She was silent with emotion when Mrs. Hancock told her she was
growing like her mother.



III


Connie Hancock was her friend.

She had once been a slender, wide-mouthed child, top-heavy with her damp
clumps of hair. Now she was squaring and thickening and looking horrid,
like Mr. Hancock. Beside her Harriett felt tall and elegant and slender.

Mamma didn't know what Connie was really like; it was one of those things
you couldn't tell her. She said Connie would grow out of it. Meanwhile you
could see _he_ wouldn't. Mr. Hancock had red whiskers, and his face
squatted down in his collar, instead of rising nobly up out of it like
Papa's. It looked as if it was thinking things that made its eyes bulge
and its mouth curl over and slide like a drawn loop. When you talked about
Mr. Hancock, Papa gave a funny laugh as if he was something improper. He
said Connie ought to have red whiskers.

Mrs. Hancock, Connie's mother, was Mamma's dearest friend. That was why
there had always been Connie. She could remember her, squirming and
spluttering in her high nursery chair. And there had always been Mrs.
Hancock, refined and mournful, looking at you with gentle, disappointed
eyes.