"Oh!" explained Betty, "I was up at Gladys Osborne's Saturday,
spending the day, and Gladys's Aunt Julia was there there--she boards
at The Trowbridge, you know, and she told us all about the
Illingworths. They board there, too, Patricia and her mother. They
aren't stuck up a bit, though I guess they're awfully rich. They came
from 'way out West--I forget the name of the place. It's where
Patricia's father's got a mine. And she hasn't ever been to school
much, only studied with her mother, and rode horseback, and all that.
Aunt Julia said she was coming to our school, and I think she's
lovely; don't you?"
"Sweet as she can be!" agreed Polly.
"I know why Ilga pounced on her so quick," confided Betty. "I'll bet
she heard me telling Lilith and some of the other girls that she was
rich, and that's just why. We were down in the dressing-room before
school. If it hadn't been for her we could have got acquainted this
morning."
"Well, there are more days coming," laughed Polly philosophically.
"That's what mother always tells me, when I want to do a thing right
then, and can't."
The talk passed to other matters, yet the eyes of both girls followed
the new pupil as she and her companion strolled from room to room of
the little suite. Here and there they would pause for a few words with
some of Ilga's friends, or to look from a window, and then move on
again. The Senator's daughter was assuredly doing the honors for the
entire school.
Polly and Betty laid plans for "the next time," but Polly kept her
secret hope close hidden in her heart, not disclosing it even to David
on the way home.
Neither did she let it be known to father or mother.
"Prob'ly Patricia isn't related to me at all," she argued to herself.
"It is silly to think anything about it."
Yet the subject was still present in her thoughts at the beginning of
the afternoon session, and she wondered when the opportunity that she
longed for would appear. It came soon, and not at all according to her
conjectures.
School was dismissed in order of deportment marks, those who stood
highest for the day passing out ahead. Among this small number was
Polly. When she reached the street door she was dismayed to see that
it was raining, and she stood hesitant on the sill, having neither
raincoat, overshoes, nor umbrella. Indifferently she noticed a
limousine waiting at the curb, and wondered for whom it had been sent.
"I think you go my way," spoke a clear voice behind her. "May I take
you home?"
Polly turned quickly, to look into the gray eyes of Patricia
Illingworth.
"Oh, thank you!" was the smiling response. "I didn't know it was
raining until just this minute."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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