And so Pearl spent the rest of the evening playing charades even though at first she was not chosen for either team on the assumption, she supposed, that she was to be identified as someone who did not know how to play the game. She was picked eventually only because one team was one player short and Sara Phillips refused to fill the place, declaring that she was so poor at the game that if she played soon every member of her team would be begging her to resign.
Pearl was not poor at charades. It was, in fact, one of her favorite indoor games. She had always loved the challenge of acting out an idea without words and of guessing the meaning of someone else’s efforts. She threw herself into the game with unbridled enthusiasm, and was soon flushed and laughing and everyone’s favorite—among
