“Well!” said she. “I wasn’t expecting anyone this morning.” She flushed, half angry. “I don’t allow this.” “My name is Joslin—David Joslin,” began her visitor. “Ye don’t remember me—last night——” “Oh, yes, I do,” said Polly. “Of course I do. You wore the same clothes then you’re wearing now.” “They’re the only ones I have,” said the young man, “an’ they’re not mine. I don’t reckon ye want me to come in?” “Why, yes,” said she, for one half instant hesitant, and closed the door. “Why not, after all?” He looked about him curiously at the narrow quarters. So, then, this was her home! These were her belongings—the half-emptied glasses on the little buffet, the ashes in a tray, the powder puff, pink-stained, on the dresser-top, the manicure nail pad, the little burnt cork on a hairpin’s end. “Won’t you sit down?” began Polly Pendleton, more flustered than she had ever been in all her life. “Will you have a little drink?” He looked at her in astonishment “Surely ye ain’t meanin’ that ye’d take a drink of liquor, Ma’am?” said he. “Well,” said Polly Pendleton, with a _moue_, “once in a long _while_—in case I’m not feeling well, you know! How about yourself? You look rocky.” He looked in grave contemplation at the half-filled bottle upon the tiny buffet—the glasses which had seen use. “Ma’am,” said he, “sometimes in my country a man takes a drink of liquor. Sometimes a woman smokes a pipe. But I don’t think I’ll take no drink this mornin’. It ain’t my usual custom.” Polly seated herself in a deep-cushioned armchair near the window, her half-consumed cigarette still between her fingers. A pleasing enough picture she presented, as, half leaning forward, she sat staring curiously at this apparition of the morning. “You’re an odd sort!” said she, at length, flinging up a hand nervously. “Well, I’ve not got down to the pipe yet.” “Say, friend,” she went on suddenly, half apologetically, “I was talking to my partner last night. She said that she thought our act rather broke you up. Of course you know it was all joshing—nothing more. That’s the way we do at those dinner parties—they sort of expect it of us girls, you know. There’s nothing in it, of course. I hope you didn’t mind it?” “No,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mind. The ways of sin are allurin’, Ma’am.” “What’s that!” But then she spread out her hands. An awkward silence fell. The eyes of David Joslin, roaming around the little apartment, spied Polly’s violin resting upon the dresser-top. “Ye play the violin, Ma’am,” said he. “Ye’re the first womern I ever knew in all my life who could. I reckon ye studied?” “Years,” said she simply. “It cost me a lot of money—and at that they don’t like the best things I do. You can play?”—eagerly. “Only a few of the mounting tunes—ballets such as our folks teached us years ago.” “Ballads? You mean the folk songs?” “Maybe. I could play ‘Barbara Allen.’ They tolt me it was Scotch.”