knew them both well this idea was absurd. It was true they were of the
same height and their hair and eyes of the same color, their noses and
mouths of somewhat the same shape, but with these superficial likenesses
the resemblance ended. Anybody should have been able to see that in each
detail Polly was the more intense; her hair was blacker and longer, her
eyes bluer, her cheek bones a little higher with brighter color and her
chin and delicate nose a trifle longer and more pointed. Of the two
girls, however, Mollie was the prettier because her features were more
regular and her expression more serene; but once under the spell of her
sister, one never thought much of her appearance.

Polly had a temperament and she was having an attack of it to-night; the
room was fairly electric with it. From some far off Irish ancestor she
must have inherited it, for though her father had been an Irishman and
had spent forty out of the fifty years of his life in Ireland, he had
quite a different disposition and had been as amazed by Polly in her
babyhood as the rest of her family.

Captain O'Neill had resigned from the English army eighteen years before
and crossed the ocean to spend a few years in the neighborhood of the
White Mountains on account of his health; he had no more money than most
Irish gentlemen, but had charming manners, was extremely handsome and
had soon fallen in love and married a girl twenty years younger than
himself. Mary Poindexter had been the girl most loved in Woodford, one
of its belles and heiresses, but her money had not amounted to much and
soon disappeared after her marriage, until now she had only the cottage
in which she and her daughters lived and the income earned by her work
as private secretary to Mr. Edward Wharton of "The Wharton Granite Co."
Captain O'Neill had lived only until his twin daughters were eight years
old and since then the girls and their mother had kept up their small