“Polly’s pretending her opera has been a success, I do believe,” a more practical guest whispered to Thurley. “She’s determined to burn her money up as fast as she can; she’s loaned us all ten dollars—” Thurley found Polly quite determined to pay no heed to her aunt’s letter. “Why should I remember I come of gentle people?” she asked, her brown eyes sparkling naughtily. “I’d rather have one or two glorious parties, treat myself to all the music I want for a season than to go snailing back to Painted Post and live in a cottage completely surrounded by neighbors. I’ve run wild too long, Thurley dear—don’t look so disappointed. Why, you beautiful, lovely thing, what right have you to show me the error of my ways, you with a king’s ransom on your fingers this minute? Yet, Thurley, when I look at you and summon my Scotch second sight to lend me wisdom, you seem fey to me, fated as the Scotch know the world. Shall I tell you your _possibilities_?” “It’s the claret,” Thurley insisted. She did not want to talk about herself because she did not seem a struggling, interesting human being like the rest. “No, it’s not claret but second sight. Bliss knows I have second sight; he’s often asked me for opinions—for everything but my operas,” she added a trifle bitterly. “Now you do seem fey, as if you ought to become a rosy-cheeked matron, the sort that has a big, brick house just packed with young people who all confide in you, and a nice, gentle sort of relatives, linen closets with lavender bags between the snowy piles, jam closets, rooms with old, soft rugs and mellowed furniture, all kinds of books and pictures and nothing so wonderful that art dealers would ever employ burglars to borrow. Just the kind of things that years afterwards would cause your children to say, ‘Oh, that was mother’s—I shall never give it up,’ or ‘Here is her shawl. How she laughed at herself for huddling so eternally in it! Let’s keep it in the cedar chest she had as a bride, she’d like to have it so, I’m certain!’ You understand, Thurley dear, the lovely common things inspired by some one not common! There, that’s quite as smart as Caleb himself could have said it.” Forgetting her errand and Hortense, Thurley repeated, “It’s the claret, Polly—and you’re quite mad....”