ain counter they were hanging
over, but the remnants of lawn and organdy and gingham were so
entrancingly new in design and dainty in coloring, that without a
thought to appearances she caught up the armful of pretty things which
Joyce had decided they could afford. Clasping them ecstatically in an
impulsive hug, she sang at the top of her voice, just as she would have
done had she been out alone on the desert: "Fortune has at last changed
in our _fa_-vor!"

When Joyce's horrified exclamation and the clerk's amused smile recalled
her to her surroundings, she could have gone under the counter with
embarrassment. Although she flushed hotly for several days whenever she
thought of the way everybody in the store turned to stare at her, she
still hummed the same words whenever a sense of her great good fortune
overwhelmed her. Such times came frequently, especially whenever a new
garment was completed and she could try it on with much preening and
many satisfied turns before the mirror.

It was on one of these occasions, when she was proudly revolving in the
daintiest of them all, a pale blue mull which she declared was the color
of a wild morning-glory, that a remark of her mother's, in the next
room, filled her with dismay. It had not been intended for her ears,
but it floated in distinctly, above the whirr of the sewing-machine.

"Joyce, I am sorry we made up that blue for Mary. She's so tanned and
sunburned that it seems to bring out all the red tints in her skin, and
makes her look like a little squaw. I never realized how this climate
has injured her complexion until I saw her in that shade of blue, and
remembered how becoming it used to be. She was like an apple-blossom,
all white and pink, when we came out here."

Mary had been so busy looking at her new clothes that she had paid
little attention to the face above them, reflected in the mirror. It had
tanned so gradually that she had become accustomed to having that
sunbrowned little visage always smile back at her. Besides, every one
she met was tanned by the wind and weather, some of them spotted with
big dark freckles. Joyce wasn't. Joyce had always been careful about
wearing a sunbonnet or a wide brimmed hat when she went out in the sun.
Mary remembered now, with many compunctions, how often she had been
warned to do the same. She wished with all her ardent little soul that
she had not been so careless, and presently, after a serious,
half-tearful study of he