However, she was no longer a child, and although it would make her extremely miserable to appear both obstinate and unloving, it might in this single instance be absolutely necessary. How much had she not already endured to gain this slight footing in her profession? Now to turn her back on it in the midst of her first success, because a few persons had made up their minds that she was ill,-well, any sensible or reasonable human being must understand that it was quite out of the question.

So the discussion continued between the woman and girl, the same arguments being repeated over and over, the same pleading, and yet without arriving at any sort of conclusion. There is no knowing how long this might have kept up if there had not come a sudden knocking at the door.

Opening it the boy outside handed Mrs. Wharton a card.

"It is Mr. Hunt who has come to see you, Polly; shall I say you are not well? Or what shall I say? Of course it is out of the question for you to see any stranger, child. You have been crying until your face is swollen and your hair is in dreadful confusion," Mrs. Wharton protested anxiously.

Polly unexpectedly scrambled to her feet. "Ask Mr. Hunt to wait a few minutes, please, mother, and then we will telephone down and tell him to come up. You see I had an engagement with him this afternoon and don't like to refuse to see him. For once it is a good thing I have no pretensions to beauty like Betty and Mollie. Moreover, mother, I am obliged to confess to you that Mr. Hunt has seen me before, not only after I had been weeping, but while I was engaged in the act. You know he was about the only friend I saw all last winter, when I was so blue and discouraged with life. Besides, I am sure he will understand my point of view in this dreadful discussion we have just been having and will help me to convince you."

Five minutes afterwards the celebrated Miss Polly O'Neill had restored her hair and costume to some semblance of order, although her eyes were still somewhat red and heavy, as well as her nose. Nevertheless she greeted her visitor without particular embarra.s.sment. Mrs. Wharton, however, could not pull herself together so readily; so after a few moments of conventional conversation she asked to be excused and went away, leaving her daughter and guest alone.

Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed, half an hour, finally an entire hour. All this while Mrs. Wharton, remaining in her daughter's bedroom which adjoined the sitting room, could hear the sound of two voices.

Of course Polly did the greater share of the talking, but now and then Richard Hunt would speak for several moments at a time and afterwards there would be odd intervals of silence.

Mrs. Wharton could not hear what was being said, and she scarcely wished to return to the sitting room. She was still far too worried and nervous, although, having an engagement that must be kept, she wished to say good-by to Polly before leaving the hotel.

Richard Hunt rose immediately upon Mrs. Wharton's entrance.

"I am ever so sorry to have made such a long visit," he apologized at once, "and I hope I have not interfered with you. Only Miss O'Neill and I have been having a pretty serious and important talk and I did not realize how much time had pa.s.sed."

Polly's eyes had been fastened upon something in the far distance. Now she glanced toward her guest.

"Oh, you need not apologize to mother for the length of your stay. When she hears what we have been discussing she will be more than grateful to you," Polly interrupted.

"You see, mother, Mr. Hunt does not agree with me, as I thought he would. Who ever has agreed with me in this tiresome world? He also thinks that I must stop acting at once and go away with you, if my family and the doctors think it necessary. And he has frightened me terribly with stories of people who have nervous breakdowns and never recover. People who never remember the lines in their plays again or what part they are expected to act. So I surrender, dear. I'll go away with you as soon as things can be arranged wherever you wish to take me." And Polly held up both her hands with an intended expression of saintliness, which was not altogether successful.

"Bravo!" Richard Hunt exclaimed quietly.

Mrs. Wharton extended her hand.

"I am more grateful to you than I can express. You have saved us all from a great deal of unhappiness and I believe you have saved Polly from more than she understands," she added.

The girl took her mother's hand, touching it lightly with her lips.

"Please don't tell Mr. Hunt what my family think of my obstinacy," she pleaded. "Because if you do, he will either have no respect for me or else will have too much for himself because I gave in to him," she said saucily.

Yet it was probably ten minutes after Mr. Hunt's departure before it occurred to Mrs. Wharton to be surprised over Polly's unexpected surrender to a comparative stranger, when she had refused to be influenced by any member of her own family.

But now the question of chief importance was where should Polly go for her much needed rest? It was her own decision finally that rather than any other place in the world she preferred to return to Woodford to spend the summer months in the old cabin near Sunrise Hill.

CHAPTER XIX-Illusions Swept Away

It was a golden July afternoon two months later when all nature was a splendid riot of color and perfume. In a hammock under a group of pine trees a girl lay half asleep. Now and then she would open her eyes to glance at the lazy white clouds overhead. Then she would look with perhaps closer attention at the figure of another girl who was seated a few yards away.

If the girl in the hammock was dreaming, her companion fitted oddly into her dream. She was dressed in a simple white muslin frock and her hair had a band of soft blue ribbon tied about it. In her lap lay an open book, but no page had been turned in the last fifteen minutes and indeed she was quieter than her friend who was supposed to be asleep.

"Betty," a voice called softly, "bring your chair nearer to me. I have done my duty n.o.bly for the past two hours and have not spoken a single, solitary word. So even the sternest of doctors and nurses can't say I am unfaithful to my rest cure. Besides it is absurd, now when I am as well as any one else. Yes, that is much better, Betty, and you are, please, to gaze directly into my face while I am talking to you. I haven't liked your fashion lately of staring off into s.p.a.ce, as you were doing just recently and indeed on all occasions when you believe no one is paying any special attention to you."

With a low curtsey Betty did as she was commanded. She even knelt down on the ground beside the hammock to look the more directly into the eyes of her friend. But as she continued, unexpectedly a slow color crept into her cheeks from her throat upwards until it had flushed her entire face.

"I declare, Polly," she exclaimed jumping to her feet abruptly and sitting down in her chair again, "you make me feel as though I had committed some offence, though I do a.s.sure you I have been as good as gold, so far as I know, for a long, long time."

Polly was silent a moment. "You know perfectly well, Betty, that I don't think you have done anything wrong. You need not use that excuse to try and deceive me, dear, because it does not make the slightest impression.

The truth is, Betty, that you have a secret that you are keeping from me and from every one else so far as I know. Of course there isn't any reason why you should confide in me if you don't wish. You may be punishing me for my lack of confidence in you last winter."

This last statement was possibly made with a double intention. Betty responded to it instantly.

"Surely, Polly, you must know that would not make the slightest difference," she returned earnestly. And then the next instant, as if fearing that she might have betrayed herself: "But what in the world makes you think I am cherishing a secret, you absurd Polly? I suppose you have had to have something to think about these past two months, when you have spent so much time lying down. Well, when I see how you have improved I am quite willing to have been your victim."

With a quick motion the other girl now managed to sit upright, piling her sofa cushions behind her. Her color was certainly sufficiently vivid at this instant. But indeed she was so improved in every way that one would hardly have known her for the Polly O'Neill of the past year's trials and successes. Her figure was almost rounded, her chin far less pointed and all the lines of fatigue and nervous strain had vanished from her face. But Polly's temper had not so materially changed!

"It isn't worth while to accuse me of having tried to spy into your private affairs, Princess," she replied haughtily. "But if you do feel that I have, then I ask your pardon for now and all times. I shall never be so offensive again."

There followed a vast and complete human silence. Then Polly got up from her resting place and went and put her arm quietly about her friend.

"Princess, I would rather that the stars should fall or the world come to an end, than have you really angry with me," she murmured. "But you know I did not mean to offend you by asking you to confide in me, don't you? Anyway I promise never, never to ask you again. Here, let me have the Woodford paper, please. I believe Billy brought us the afternoon edition. I wonder if he and Mollie will be gone on their boating expedition for long? They must have been around the lake half a dozen times already."

As though dismissing the subject of their past conversation entirely from her mind, Polly, resuming her hammock, now buried herself in the columns of the Woodford Gazette. Apparently she had not observed that no reply had been made either to her accusation or apology. She could see that Betty was not seriously angry, which was the main thing.

"Get out your embroidery, Princess, and let me read the news aloud to you;" she demanded next. "I love to watch you sew. It is not because you do it so particularly well, but because you always manage to look like a picture in a book. Funny thing, dear, why you have such a different appearance from the rest of us. Oh, I am not saying that probably other girls are not as pretty as you are, Mollie and Meg for instance. But you have a different look somehow. No wonder Angel thinks you are a fairy princess."

But at this moment an unexpected choking sound, that seemed in some fashion to have come forth from Betty, interrupted the flow of her friend's compliments.

"Please don't, Polly," she pleaded. "You know I love your Irish blarney most of the time beyond anything in this world. But now I want to tell you something. I have had a kind of a secret for over a year, but it is past now and I'm dreadfully sorry if you believe you find a change in me that you don't like. I suppose sometimes I do feel rather blue simply because I am of so little account in the world. Please don't think I am jealous, but you and Sylvia and Nan and Meg are all doing things and Esther and Edith and Eleanor are married and Mollie helps her mother with your big house. I believe Beatrice and Judith are both at college, though we have been separated from them for such a long time. So you see I am the only good-for-nothing in the old Sunrise Hill Camp Fire circle."

"Yes, I see," was the somewhat curt reply from behind the outspread paper.

"Mrs. Martins told me yesterday that the surgeons Dr. Barton brought to see Angelique think she may be able to walk in another year or so and I believe Cricket is to give up her crutches altogether in a few months,"

Polly presently remarked.

In the sunshine Betty Ashton's face shone with happiness. "Yes, isn't it wonderful?" she remarked innocently.

"Of course, doing beautiful things for other people isn't being of the slightest use in the world," the other girl continued, as though talking to herself. "Yet Mrs. Martins also said yesterday, that she and Angelique believed they had strayed into Paradise they were so happy here at the cabin with the prospect of Angel's growing better ahead of them. And I believe Cricket dances and sings with every step she takes nowadays."

"But I?" interrupted Betty.

"No, of course you have had nothing in the world to do with it and I never accused you for a single instant," her friend argued, and then Polly fell to reading the paper aloud.

"'The friends of Doctor and Mrs. Richard Ashton, now of Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, but formerly of Woodford, New Hampshire, will be delighted to hear of the birth of their son, Richard Jr., on July the fourteenth.' How does it feel to be an aunt?" the reader demanded.

"Delicious," Betty sighed, and then began dreaming of her new nephew, wondering when she was to be allowed to see him, until Polly again interfered with her train of thought.

"'Mr. and Mrs. Frank Wharton entertained at dinner last night in their new home in honor of Mr. Anthony Graham, our brilliant young congressman who has returned to Woodford for a few days.' Well, I like that!" Polly protested. "Think of Frank and Eleanor daring to give a dinner party and asking none of their other old friends or relatives. They must feel set up at being married before the rest of us."

For the first time Betty now actually took a few industrious st.i.tches in her embroidery. "Oh, they probably did not have but two or three guests.