had decided opinions on many subjects that he knew very little
about, and expressed them with great candor.
A curious smile passed over Polly’s face and she put up her glass to
hide her eyes, as she said: “I think you are bats sometimes, but
women are taught to wear masks, and that accounts for it, I
suppose.”
“I don’t agree. There ‘s precious little masking nowadays; wish
there was a little more sometimes,” added Tom, thinking of several
blooming damsels whose beseeching eyes had begged him not to
leave them to wither on the parent stem.
“I hope not, but I guess there ‘s a good deal more than any one
would suspect.”
“What can you know about broken hearts and blighted beings?”
asked Sydney, smiling at the girl’s pensive tone.
Polly glanced up at him and her face dimpled and shone again, as
she answered, laughing: “Not much; my time is to come.”
“I can’t imagine you walking about the world with your back hair
down, bewailing a hard-hearted lover,” said Tom.
“Neither can I. That would n’t be my way.”
“No; Miss Polly would let concealment prey on her damask cheeks
and still smile on in the novel fashion, or turn sister of charity and
nurse the heartless lover through small-pox, or some other
contagious disease, and die seraphically, leaving him to the
agonies of remorse and tardy love.”
Polly gave Sydney an indignant look as he said that in a slow
satirical way that nettled her very much, for she hated to be
thought sentimental.
“That ‘s not my way either,” she said decidedly. “I ‘d try to outlive
it, and if I could n’t, I ‘d try to be the better for it. Disappointment
need n’t make a woman a fool.”
“Nor an old maid, if she ‘s pretty and good. Remember that, and
don’t visit the sins of one blockhead on all the rest of mankind,”
said Tom, laughing at her earnestness.
“I don’t think there is the slightest possibility of Miss Polly’s being
either,” added Sydney with a look which made it evident that
concealment had not seriously damaged Polly’s damask cheek as
yet.
“There ‘s Clara Bird. I have n’t seen her but once since she was
married. How pretty she looks!” and Polly retired behind the big
glass again, thinking the chat was becoming rather personal.
“Now, there ‘s a girl who tried a different cure for unrequited
affection from any you mention. People say she was fond of Belle’s
brother. He did n’t reciprocate but went off to India to spoil his
constitution, so Clara married a man twenty years older than she is
and consoles herself by being the best-dressed woman in the city.”
“That accounts for it,” said Polly, when Tom’s long whisper ended.
“For what?”
“The tired look in her eyes.”
“I don’t see it,” said Tom, after a survey through the glass.
“Did n’t expect you would.”
“I see what you mean. A good many women have it nowadays,”
said Sydney over Polly’s shoulder.
“What’s she tired of? The old gentleman?” asked Tom.
“And herself,” added Polly.
“You ‘ve been reading French novels, I know you have. That ‘s just
the way the heroines go on,” cried Tom.
“I have n’t read one, but it ‘s evident you have, young man, and you
‘d better stop.”
“I don’t care for ’em; only do it to keep up my French. But how
came you to be so wise, ma’am?”
“Observation, sir. I like to watch faces, and I seldom see a
grown-up one that looks perfectly happy.”
“True for you, Polly; no more you do, now I think of it. I don’t
know but one that always looks so, and there it is.”
“Where?” asked Polly, with interest.
“Look straight before you and you ‘ll see it.”
Polly did look, but all she saw was her own face in the little mirror
of the fan which Tom held up and peeped over with a laugh in his
eyes.
“Do I look happy? I ‘m glad of that,” And Polly surveyed herself
with care.
Both young men thought it was girlish vanity and smiled at its
naive display, but Polly was looking for something deeper than