“Come, sit in my lap, Polly,” said Thurley suddenly. “I’ve always wanted to have you, you’re such a featherweight and I’m so huge. I always wanted to capture you and make you hear me out. You don’t know how glad I am for you and what wonderful things are ahead for every one.” She beckoned so enticingly that Polly, the same, unspoiled Polly in brown smock and shabby boots, perched herself on Thurley’s knee while they talked it all out. The Fincherie Colony and Hobart’s precious dreams, the useless, selfish work Caleb was doing, Ernestine’s amusingly complaining letters, Lissa’s lack of success in finding a duke or a blue-blooded patroness, the threat that she might have to cut her hair short if she was really going to stay—what would become of that lazy rascal of a Mark?—and here was Collin giving no one a hint as to what he was doing. And then Polly flushed and she said awkwardly: “Perhaps he will come to care a little, now, Thurley—success sometimes makes people seem different—more desirable, doesn’t it? I know it ought not to be the bait—but when you have cared so long—you are reckless. Money never brings a person the real things, does it?” And Polly began to sob, as she had refrained from sobbing for years while Thurley rocked her in her arms, playing comforting gray angel and understanding woman all in one. They ended quite normally by a heated argument as to whether Polly should or should not—now that she was to be placed on a pedestal with Francis Scott Key—wear a distinctive costume while she toured the country and sang her songs—say a bright red sailor and a blue cloth cape with a single line of white braid—and didn’t she feel ashamed to make such distressing faces because Thurley was planning a pink chiffon evening dress for her—base ingratitude of these newly arrived! So Polly toured the country in the costume Thurley designed, singing her songs and meeting with success, while music shops plastered their windows with Polly Harris’ latest, and news of her triumph echoed in the trenches to startle Ernestine into cabling congratulations and Lissa into groaning in envy. Polly was to join Bliss in San Francisco for a spring campaign and, when she visited Thurley at the Fincherie, she took endless photographs and mental notes of the colony with which to regale him, asking if there was any special message Thurley wished him to have. “How wonderfully it is coming on! How kind every one is and workmen seem to do wonders in no time! We shall have the last house restored by July—and tell him we have two hundred boys here and they say they never want to move along—” “I mean personal message,” Polly interrupted. Thurley shook her head. “I’ll use my own judgment,” Polly added, not knowing how dangerously near she came to repeating words of grave and liberating importance.