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6 Ada was sitting on the arm of a chair with her feet in the seat, bent over a magazine. She was different from her sisters. They called her a youngster still, for although she was eighteen years old, she had not acquired yet the marks of sophisticated young ladyhood, which her sisters, Beatrice, and Susan, and Maizie, bore. Her hair, innocent of a net, and bearing no signs of curling tongs, always had a wind-blown appearance—mussy, her sisters called it. She was a lean, athletic girl. She looked more as if she had been brought up beside golf-links and tennis-courts, than in the atmosphere of matinées and movie-shows.

She did not look up from her magazine as she replied, "Isn't my mark there?"

Each of the Belden girls and their mother had her own particular sign, and when the bills arrived, they designated by whom the various articles were purchased. It was one of Marcus's requirements. He didn't believe in allowances. He didn't want his girls flaunting bank-accounts of their own. He preferred to wade through the columns upon columns of women's paraphernalia himself—camisoles, brassières, chemisettes—good Lord, like so much Greek to him!—egg massages, dry shampoos—but at least his hand was on the tiller.