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‘It’s not because I wasn’t grateful.’ She blushed a little as
she uttered the formal phrase which she had prepared. ‘I
shall always value the necklace, and it was very kind of you
to give it me.’
Philip found it always a little difficult to talk to her. She
did all that she had to do very competently, but seemed to
feel no need of conversation; yet there was nothing unso-
ciable in her. One Sunday afternoon when Athelny and his
wife had gone out together, and Philip, treated as one of the
family, sat reading in the parlour, Sally came in and sat by
the window to sew. The girls’ clothes were made at home
and Sally could not afford to spend Sundays in idleness.
Philip thought she wished to talk and put down his book.
‘Go on reading,’ she said. ‘I only thought as you were
alone I’d come and sit with you.’
‘You’re the most silent person I’ve ever struck,’ said Phil-
ip.
‘We don’t want another one who’s talkative in this house,’
she said.
There was no irony in her tone: she was merely stating
a fact. But it suggested to Philip that she measured her fa-
ther, alas, no longer the hero he was to her childhood, and
in her mind joined together his entertaining conversation
and the thriftlessness which often brought difficulties into
their life; she compared his rhetoric with her mother’s prac-
tical common sense; and though the liveliness of her father
amused her she was perhaps sometimes a little impatient
with it. Philip looked at her as she bent over her work; she
was healthy, strong, and normal; it must be odd to see her

0 Of Human Bondage