She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.

Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.

As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.

He was just like summer, and she loved summer. If she had any wish, it would be to live a lifetime of summers.

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.

Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.