With the exception of herself they numbered eight, and though there had been considerably more young people than that present in the billiard-room last night, she gathered from the conversation that was going on round her that, during the holidays at least, Mrs. Danvers kept a sort of open house for all the friends of her own children.
Opposite Margaret, on Geoffrey's other hand, sat Joan Green. Though she was only fifteen, she looked at least a year older, in spite of the fact that she wore her hair in a long, thick plait down her back. Margaret, who was still under the impression that Joan had been flying from the room in a rage as she came in, and that she had been the means of soothing her back to a better temper, was a little hurt and puzzled at the studious way in which Joan's eyes avoided hers. Once when she had caught their glance for a moment, and had smiled a friendly recognition into them, she had been rewarded by a cold glare that had quite startled her. Next to Joan sat Hilary, and the two girls had seemingly a great deal to say to each other, for though now and again they joined in the general conversation, for the most part they talked together in undertones audible to themselves alone. Hilary's face was a pale likeness of Maud's. Her eyes were not so blue, nor was her complexion so tanned as her sister's, and though her features resembled Maud's sufficiently closely to cause them to be easily recognised as sisters, Hilary's face lacked the look of sparkling vivacity which made Maud's face so attractive. On the other side of Hilary and next to Maud sat Jack, with his brother Noel, the other naval cadet, facing him. Then came Nancy, the girl who had offered Margaret chocolates and advice the previous evening, and when she caught Margaret's eyes now she smiled and nodded as much as to say she quite understood the latter's desire to find out what they were all like.
Nancy was not the only person who had noted the way in which Margaret's eyes had been travelling round the table, for when the turn of the boy next to her came to be inspected, she was startled to hear Geoffrey on the other side of her say:--
"Don't waste time on him, Miss Carson. He's not worth it, I assure you; that's only Edward--Silly Ned as we call him. You must call him that too; he never answers to any other name."