Explore "Polly a New-Fashioned Girl" by L.T. Meade on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It did not work well as far as Polly was concerned. Whatever she was at home, whatever her faults and failings, whatever her wild vagaries, or unreasonable moods, she somehow or other always managed to be first. First in play, first in naughtiness, first at her lessons, the best musician, the best artist, the best housekeeper, the best originator of sports and frolics on all occasions, was Polly Maybright. From this position, however, she was suddenly dethroned. It was quite impossible for Polly to be first when Flower was in the room.
Flower Dalrymple had the ways and manners of a young queen. She was imperious, often ungracious, seldom obliging, but she had a knack of getting people to think first of her, of saying the sort of things which drew attention, and of putting every other little girl with whom she came into contact completely in the shade.