Mrs Gardiner looked at her with genuine surprise. ‘Can you really suppose,’ she asked, ‘that we would arrange a pleasant dinner for family and friends, and send you off into exile upstairs?’ ‘I would understand if you did,’ replied Mary. ‘I do not sparkle much at dinners, I’m afraid.’ ‘Perhaps that says more about the dinners you have so far attended than it does about you,’ declared Mrs Gardiner. ‘And anyway, in our house, no one is obliged to sparkle. Which, I find, makes it far more likely that they might. So, you will join us, I hope?’
