Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/26

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
16
TWIN TALES

the first, her butternut brown showed a tendency to fade into magnolia-pink with a background of gardenia-white, and certain earlier boy-like straightnesses of line took unto themselves mysterious contours, and the runway of freckles that spanned the bridge of her adorable little nose faded like a Milky Way in the morning sky.

And that meant still another era, the era of solemnly visited shops in the City, and muffled and many-mirrored salons where she was pinned up and snipped at and pressed down, and sleepy afternoon concerts that smelled of violets and warm furs and over-breathed air, and a carefully selected matinée or two, and even revived lessons in dancing, which, oddly enough, the resilient-spirited Teddie never greatly took to. And then came equally sedate and carefully timed migrations to Lakewood and Aiken and Florida, though Teddie openly acknowledged her dislike to traveling with a retinue and seventeen pieces of baggage, to say nothing of the genealogical books and the case of certified milk.

But there were quite a number of inex-