awkwardness for both of them.

The contrasting of the two girls was inevitable. Like father like
daughter. Mary was no more than a pale camp-follower of a gorgeous,
conquering general. Frederick's thrift had been sorely educated in the
matter of clothes. He knew just how expensive Mary's clothes were, yet
he could not blind himself to the fact that Polly's vagabond makeshifts,
cheap and apparently haphazard, were always all right and far more
successful. Her taste was unerring. Her ways with a shawl were
inimitable. With a scarf she performed miracles.

"She just throws things together," Mary complained. "She doesn't even
try. She can dress in fifteen minutes, and when she goes swimming she
beats the boys out of the dressing rooms." Mary was honest and
incredulous in her admiration. "I can't see how she does it. No one
could dare those colours, but they look just right on her."

"She's always threatened that when I became finally flat broke she'd set
up dressmaking and take care of both of us," Tom contributed.

Frederick, looking over the top of a newspaper, was witness to an
illuminating scene; Mary, to his certain knowledge, had been primping
for an hour ere she appeared.

"Oh! How lovely!" was Polly's ready appreciation. Her eyes and face
glowed with honest pleasure, and her hands wove their delight in the
air. "But why not wear that bow so and thus?"

Her hands flashed to the task, and in a moment the miracle of taste and
difference achieved by her touch was apparent even to Frederick.