His pleasures and ambitions run in different directions from the girls; there is less clashing of interests.

Besides this, Gypsy's playmates in Yorkbury, as has been said, had not chanced to be girls of very strong wills.

Quite to her surprise, since Joy had been her roommate and constant companion, had she found out that she--Gypsy--had been pretty well used to having her own way, and that other people sometimes liked to have theirs.
As for Joy, she had always been an only child, and that tells a history.
Of the two perhaps she had the more to learn.

The simple fact that she was brought wisely and kindly, but _thoroughly_, under Mrs.Breynton's control, was decidedly a revelation to her.

At her own home, it had always been said, from the time she was a baby, that her mother could not manage her, and her father would not.