Page:Good Sports (1919).djvu/74

Rh more effort, was another proof of the poor stuff of which she was made.

"I'm no good. That's all. Simple enough. There's usually one member of a large family who's no good. I'm that one. Good thing I'm not a man. 'Twould be tragic if Bert or Harry was the ne'er-do-well member of the family. But even if I'm not much good," she said savagely to herself, "my feelings aren't made of leather. To hear them down-stairs there, you'd think they thought me too much of a fool even to perceive what a failure I am in comparison to them."

Her black mood was still upon her in the morning. However, she chirruped a cheerful greeting to everybody at the breakfast table, and no one guessed that her manner concealed a black bear (as she called these fits of depression of hers). Probably the beast would have slunk away after a day or two, as was its habit, and with no one the wiser, but for an inadvertent moment in the automobile as Constance accompanied her father to his down-town office.

She often rode down town with him in the morning. There was nothing else important she had to do, as a rule; and as her father knew it, and liked company—especially her company—(they rode horse-back, played golf incessantly together,