"This is a lovely material," she said thoughtfully. "Is it the color
you don't like?"
"N-no," Joy answered doubtfully. "It's the make." Then she burst out
passionately. "I want to look frisky!" she declared. "I want to be
dressed the way John's used to seeing girls. I--I want to look just
as pretty and like folks as Gail Maddox!"
She checked herself, flushing and biting her lip. She hadn't meant
to say that!
But Phyllis took it beautifully.
"No reason why you shouldn't look just exactly like folks," she
soothed. "This is lovely, too, this silver tissue. Goodness, what a
lot of material there is in these angel sleeves!"... She held it up
consideringly... "Wait a minute, Joy, I think I read my title
clear." She ran out of the room, coming back in a moment with a
life-size dress-form in her arms, which she set down.
"Here's Dora, the dress-model," she said cheerfully. "She adjusts."
In proof she began to screw Dora down and in to required
proportions, measuring her by Joy, who watched operations with
fascinated eyes.
"I never knew you could sew," she said.
"My father was a country minister," Mrs. Harrington explained,
flinging the green frock, inside out, over the steely shoulders of
Dora, the dress-frame. "I cook very nicely, if I do say it myself,
and till I was seventeen I did every bit of my own sewing."
"And were you married at seventeen?"
"No," Phyllis answered, stopping a moment from her pinnings and
speaking more gravely.
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