Indeed, to any observer with a heart it must have been touching to see Mary driven away in that magnificent black carriage, staring with agonised hostility in front of her through her large spectacles, compelled to balance herself exactly between the magnificent sunshade of Mrs.Le Page and the smaller but also magnificent sunshade of the lovely Charlotte.

Mrs.Cole, glancing in that direction, may have felt with a pang that she would never be able to make her children handsome and gay as she would like to do--but it was certainly a pang of only a moment's duration.
She would not have exchanged her Mary for a wagon-load of Charlottes.
And Jeremy, bumping along in the jingle, also felt the contrast.

Why could not Mary wear her straw hat straight, and why must she have elastic under her chin?
Why did she look so cross and so stupid?
Why did she bother him so with her worries?
Charlotte would never worry him.

She would just sit there, looking beautiful, with her golden hair, and blue eyes and pink cheeks.

Next week was to be Miss Jones's birthday, and in preparation for this he had bought for her in Polchester a silver thimble.