POLLY PENDLETON

“WELL, Marcia, here we are,” said James Haddon, as at last their long railway journey drew to its close in the swift sweep of the train up the gates of the great city by the sea. “Better begin to round up your wild man—I saw him standing in the vestibule looking out of the window as though he was in a trance. What are we going to do with him, now we’ve got him?”

“We’ll take him with us to our home, of course, Jim. He’d be lost anywhere else. He knows no more than a child.”

“Pretty husky child, some ways,” said Haddon. “Well, all right, all right! I suppose you’re glad he’s different from me. You don’t seem to have a lot of use for me any more, some way—you’ve been like a clam ever since we left New York, and you’re more like a clam now that we’re getting back. There’s worse fellows in the world than Jimmy Haddon, and maybe you’ll live to see it yet. I’ll show you, if this deal goes through—and it will if your wild friend makes good.

“But now here we are getting into the tube—I’d better catch the wild man, or he may get scared and jump off the train. All right—we’ll take him up home.”

The rushing whirl of the city received them—the city, a place occupied, so it seemed to this stranger, with sad-faced madmen hurrying here and yon without purpose. Mad—mad—hopelessly mad—so it all seemed to David Joslin as, himself frightened with the noise, the clamorings, the uncertainty of it all, he finally emerged from the gates of the railway station and stood close to the side of the woman who now made his main reliance in this new world of the great Outside.

A deferential man in livery came toward them and led them to a long, shining limousine car which stood at the curb. A moment later they were whirling away through the crowded streets, escaping death every instant, so it seemed to the newcomer, by the miracle of a second’s fraction. He held his peace, as he had now for five days in a new, mad world of which he had not dreamed. They passed on out through the crowded traffic street until they reached paved ways leading to the north, and so, after a long and steady flight of the car, drew up at the entrance of a great apartment building on the river drive.

Joslin followed in. He never in his life before had been in a passenger elevator. He felt a strange sinking at the pit of his stomach, and caught instinctively at the bars of the gate. He was still less at ease when they led him into the silent and dim apartments where Haddon and his wife lived, as luxurious as any of the Riverside, the rent of which each month was more than any farm in all the Cumberlands would bring in a year.

But Joslin was now in the home of a gentlewoman. Quietly she took him in hand, relieving his embarrassment, setting him at his ease, showing him where he might live, and telling him kindly what might be expected of him. He looked about him at his own room with awe. These furnishings to him were so unbelievably luxurious that he dared not sit down upon a chair. He gazed upon the bed, with its yellow coverlet of silk, with but one resolve—he would sleep upon the floor, but never venture further—nor did he. And when presently they called him to table he felt his heart sink yet further in these strange surroundings, so that he could not eat. He had accosted as “Mister” the servant who went to his room with him—he saw the same man now, and wondered that he stood, and did not eat with the others—wondered that no one noticed him nor the white-capped maid who passed. Surely it was all a strange, mad world.

“Well,” said Haddon, after his hurried finishing of his own meal, “I’ve got to get down to the little old shop right away, Marcia. They’ll not be expecting me, of course, but it’s a good piece of business that I’m back when I am, and just the way I am.”

“I presume you’ll have plenty to do,” commented his wife.

“Listen! I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m going to get together all the directors of the Company, and we’ll pull off a little dinner at the Williston—in the Gold Room. How’ll that do, my Christian friend?” said he, grinning at Joslin as he stepped to the hall table and picked up his own hat and gloves.

“Of course, I can’t do that right away,” he continued, turning back, his stick over his arm, his well-brushed hat now on his head. “Maybe a couple of days. I’ll be busy. Maybe I’ll have to stay down at the club to-night, Marcia. I’ll check up about dinner time.”

He did not call up at about dinner time, nor at all until past noon the next day, when he explained that he had been crowded at the office and unable to get his own apartments by phone—explanations with which his wife was fairly familiar.

As for Joslin, he passed the two days in what seemed to him a continual kaleidoscope of madhouse change. Now in charge of one of the chauffeurs, sometimes in the more gracious company of his hostess, he spun up and down the streets of the great city, looking at the untold thousands of its inhabitants, wondering at its stately buildings, wondering at the beauty of its parks, so like and yet so unlike the woods he had always known. In the evening, in his own room, he read steadily, as best he might, spelling out the complex, stern theology of old John Calvin. Now and again he raised his eyes and wondered what Calvin would have done had he been here.

They brought to him now certain other clothing of Jimmy Haddon’s, a trifle short, a trifle large, but serving better than anything he yet had had. He was not happy in all this—no man ever was more unhappy in all his life than David Joslin now. Moreover, there came to his heart, every moment of the day and night, the most exquisite of pain—nostalgia—the actual illness of homesickness. He longed unspeakably for the sight of the mountains, for the smell of the wood-smoke of the fires, the look of the stars at night, the pink of the dawn when morning came. Life here was a fearsome thing, and long and hard seemed the unknown road that lay before him.

Haddon came home after his second night away and announced that all was in readiness for the great banquet of the men whom he represented in his business affiliations.

“I’m going to give you your first chance in public speaking now, Joslin,” said he. “Believe me, you’ll have an attentive audience for once, if you never do again—weren’t you talking of being a preacher, or something? Talk business, son, straight business—that’s all we want to hear. If you make good, you’ll have the time of your life. Help us, and we’ll help you—see?”

“How about clothes?” He turned questioningly to his wife, who was in the room at the time. “Of course it’s evening dress—is there a spare suit of mine around anywhere?”

Marcia Haddon looked at the two for a moment “Perhaps Mr. Joslin would not prefer it,” said she.

Joslin shook his head. “No,” said he. “I hain’t a-goin’ to change from these clothes I’ve got on now. I’m used to ‘em a little.”

Haddon’s companion, therefore—and Haddon rather prided himself on his invariably well-groomed appearance—presented something of a noticeable turn-out when they entered the lobby of the great hotel where the banquet was to be, but he did not notice the apologetic grimaces Haddon gave in response to certain lifted eyebrows of his friends whom he met here and there.

“Well, come along, old man,” said he to his guest, at length. “We’ll leave our coats and hats here, and go and see if we can find some more of the fellows.”

He was not at a loss as to the place of search. The long glazed and marbled bar of the Williston at that time was thronged with hundreds, much athirst. Behind the vast reaches of mahogany stood many bartenders, all busy. Men in evening dress, with top hats and beautifully fitting evening wear, men impeccable in gloves and glasses and fit for presentation in any city of the world—stood here, laughing, talking, jesting, drinking. One after another all these now accosted Haddon, some with a sly word, a glance, a hint, a jest—things which he hushed down as soon as might be, for he knew the keen suspicion of the mountaineer.

“Well, what are you going to have to drink?” said he to Joslin at length, edging his own way up to the bar. “We’ve got to lay some sort of a foundation for the dinner, you know. What kind of cocktail do you want—Martini?”

“I never did drink nothin’ but plain corn liquor,” said Joslin. “If I could have jest a leetle of that now, maybe——”

“Nonsense! Have a cocktail. It’s too early for hard liquor yet. Make him another, John,” and he nodded to the bartender.

Joslin raised the little glass, whose contents seemed, in color at least, not unfamiliar to him as a mountain man, but he drank no more than half of the contents, and then set down the glass. It was his first and only cocktail. He made no comment as his host urged him, but moved away from the bar. Haddon himself remained to finish two or three more of the insidious potions before he himself turned and with the others began to move toward the quarters set apart for the banquet party.

By this time the crowd was much like the usual male banquet crowd—a trifle flushed of face, a trifle garrulous of tongue, each in his own heart happy, and each in his own belief quite witty and very much aplomb. They were seated in due course at the long tables arranged after the fashion of a Maltese cross. Haddon, it seemed, was to preside. He placed his guest at his own right, in the place of honor.

“Trust little old Jimmy to pull a thing off,” said one merchant to another. “He never went down to that country for nothing. He’s got the goods with him, and you can gamble on that. He told me himself how he caught this wild mountain man and brought him on to talk to us to-night. He knows every foot of the land in there, and he can tell us the whole works. Coal—gas—oil—those lands of ours are full of it! Looks like we were going to make a killing. Trust Jimmy. He’s one grand little live wire, if we’ve got one in our village.”

The dinner wore on, much as these things usually run—the original stage of hilarity somewhat modified under the sobering influence of food. It was all strange to Joslin, who, so it seemed to him, scarcely had one plate set before him before it was taken away and replaced by yet another. Few noticed what he did.

Presently, when all were well forward with coffee and cigars, Haddon rapped loudly on the table as he rose. A change came over the entire personnel of the assemblage. Here but now had been a riotous meeting of full-blooded men, young men, middle-aged men, gray-haired men, bent on nothing better than drinking and eating. But now anyone who glanced down these tables would have seen a steady keenness, a fixity of purpose, on the face of practically every man present. They were hard-headed American business men on the instant now, each man ready for the purpose which really had brought him here. Money—the pursuit of money—the keen zest of the game of business—that was the real intoxication of these men, and not that of alcohol. They listened now in perfect silence to what their representative might have to say.

Haddon told them briefly something of his late trip into the Cumberlands, told why it had been ended so abruptly for a second time, admitted that he had never been over much of the Company’s land holdings, in the mountains, and explained the reasons why that was a difficult thing. He showed that it was necessary to have a guide to make a successful exploration of the properties in that country, and adverted to the benefits of direct testimony rather than hearsay, explaining how he had brought this mountaineer, who had spent all his life in the middle of the Company’s properties, to the city with him to tell them his own first-hand story of the land.

A large map hung on the wall, and to this he adverted from time to time. Joslin’s eyes followed him. Yes, he knew these streams—he could locate this or that territory familiar to himself, here on the map. He knew on the ground what Haddon pointed out upon the map. So presently, when they called upon him to speak, he rose with no great diffidence on his own part.

They greeted him with a generous round of applause, which startled him, for he had never heard anything of the sort. But after all David Joslin was a man of great dignity and self-respect, with great powers of mind as well as of body. And there lurked somewhere within him, as in so many of these strong characters of the hills, natural instincts of the orator.

He spoke strongly, simply, powerfully, with no attempt at embellishment, but in such terms as left no doubt whatsoever as to his meaning. After a time he stepped to the map, and, pointing out here and there, explained as nearly as he himself knew the nature of the Company’s holdings. He told them where the coal cropped out at the headwaters of this or that creek, told them that on some of the mountain sides three veins of coal had been known ever since he could remember, the middle vein over eight feet thick, the lower four feet thick, and that nearest to the mountain top almost as deep. He explained to them that there was coal over more than a hundred miles of that country, as he knew, and told them how nearly everyone mined his own coal on his own land, and did not trouble to cut wood for much of the year.

As for the new strikes of oil, Joslin could put his finger upon the map where every one of these discoveries had been made. He said that his own people cared little for that, for they had long grown to believe there was no way for them to get out into the world. He explained to them that there were no roads in that country, that logs were dragged down the mountain side by cattle, rolled into the shallow streams by hand labor, and left to the chance of the infrequent “tides.” He told them that in many of those streams there were logs enough to touch end to end from one end of the creek to the other—logs enough bedded in the sand to floor the creek entirely for half its length—black walnut logs two and a half feet through—white oak logs three and a half feet in diameter—and poplar four and a half feet. Their eyes glistened as he went on telling all these things naturally, simply, naively, as one fully acquainted with them. He explained to them the ways of all these methods of logging, how no one could run a saw mill in that region with profit, how no raftsman ever made more than a living at his work, hard as it was. Then he told them how he himself had seen the stakes of the new railroad line coming across the head of Hell-fer-Sartin and making for the upper waters of Big Creek, and passing thence on to the older railway lines.

“When the railroad comes, gentle-men,” said he, “things has got to change in thar. We’ve been alone—no one knows much about our lands. Ye come in thar twenty years ago, when no one cared for nothin’. Ye bought yore land fer skercely a dollar a acre, most of it, an’ thar’s trees on it thar that’s wuth ten an’ twenty dollars fer every log in ‘em, onct ye git ‘em out, an’ two, three, four logs to the tree. The railroad will let the world in, an’ it’ll let us out. I reckon the time has come fer that. All I ask ye in turn fer what I’m a-tellin’ ye, is to treat my people fair. Give them a fair value fer what they’ve got. They’re pore, they’re ignerint, they’re blind. I’m as ignerint as the wust of ‘em. But we’re squar’ with ye. We want ye to be squar’ with us.”

A blank silence greeted this last remark. Men looked from one to the other. Once in a while there might have been a cynical smile or sneer that passed. After he had spoken for an hour, perhaps more than an hour, and had answered all such questions as they asked him, David Joslin sat down. A voice in the back part of the room arose.

“What’s the matter with Jimmy Haddon?”

A vociferous chorus answered. Joslin did not understand the methods of these men, but vaguely he gathered that what he had said had been well received.

On the whole he felt content. Now, he said to himself, on the very next day he would go about his own business. He would leave this place, which confused him so much. He was done with the city now. He had done his duty.

But this did not by any means close the entertainment of the evening as these men conceived it. As they had been revelers and again business men, so now once more they laid aside the habit of affairs and turned again to the business of banqueting. Waiters came quickly and filled up glasses, large glasses, with bubbling wine. Again mingling voices arose, laughter, jests. The glasses were filled again, and yet again. The business of the day was over. Joy was to be more unconfined.

Men drew back curtains at the head of the hall, revealing a little platform where stood a piano, which was wheeled into place. At a signal from Haddon there entered an orchestra of foreign sort, and they mingled music and jangling discord of the usual kind, perhaps among other things a melody or so of the hour; for voices arose, and sounds of hands and feet keeping time. A basso, very knock-kneed and small of chin, appeared from some unknown region, sang a solo, bowed and disappeared. A quartet of negro singers furnished rather better entertainment, so it seemed. And then men began to push back their chairs, so that they might easily see the entrance of the room.

All at once a round of general and vociferous applause arose. Jimmy Haddon arose and hastened to greet the latest comers.

There stood in the doorway two young women, dressed with a certain similarity, their long cloaks held together by clasps, their arms in long white gloves. There were two, but there might as well have been but one, for the older of the concert team of Pendleton and Stanton—Pollie Pendleton and Nina Stanton, known in every theater of the land that year—lacked so much of the charm of her companion that she quite resigned herself to the amiable role of foil.

They were young women of that sort known in Babylon and Boston. Whence they come, who shall say? Whither they go, who knows—the young women of the world, the beloved and the forgotten. The world has always had them, and perhaps will always have them—young, splendidly beautiful, splendidly alluring—who come from none knows whence, and who go no one knows whither.

The assembled males applauded when they saw these two young women standing there—short of skirt, low of slipper, low of gown. All but one rose gaily to welcome them. One man sat transfixed.

There was revealed to David Joslin, in the person of Polly Pendleton, such a vision as never had he known in all his life, a dream which he not yet had dreamed, nor could have dreamed, so wholly outside of all his possible experience must it have been called. He never before had seen woman at her frank best in sheer riot of the beauty of her sex. It awed him.

She was a woman, but scarce seemed that to him. To his eyes she was not woman, but some supernal thing, a Presence, a Being. And in the sheer fact that she was of his genus, of his species, that she was woman and he was man, he sat suddenly exalted, glorified himself, superman—for now at last his eyes had seen!

She smiled at them all in her swift and comradely fashion, and stepped promptly toward the little platform. Not a man there who did not know Polly Pendleton of the Follies, the best-liked girl on the stage that year. Singer, violinist, dancer—she had made her way up by one or the other of her arts or all of them, until now she might use all or either, as she liked.

A woman of about middle stature was Polly Pendleton, of covetably slender and firm-set figure. Her eyes were large and dark, with long lashes, her face a strong, clean oval, her skin clear, her teeth brilliant, her head a mass of short, dark curls. So much might be said of many women, perhaps, but Polly Pendleton had some strange plus charm of her own, that charm for which managers pay any price. She seemed the very spirit, the very embodiment of life, youth, eagerness—of vital joy itself. The thought of evil could not touch her, so sweet and clean she seemed, in every fiber of her being there was such life and such joy in living. Her gestures were those of the young animal, of the bird, careless, unstudied. She had no art, but succeeded through her lack of art and through her own zest, her sheer vitality.

When Polly Pendleton stood waiting for something, interested in anything, keyed up, not even her feet could rest upon the floor. She had a strange way sometimes, even when talking to one, of dancing up and down on her toes, light as a feather, her young limbs seeming not to feel the weight of her body. There seemed an ethereal air about her, as though she needed not to walk, needed not to stand, unless she liked.

She stood now before them, having drawn from beneath her coat her cherished violin, whose music had pleased so many thousands. Obviously she intended first to play. She laid aside her cloak and stood, eager, interested, slightly leaning forward, anxious, dancing up and down upon her little feet. Youth, life, joy, vitality, freedom from care, absolute ignorance and disregard of toil or trouble or anxiety—there stood Polly Pendleton.

She laid the violin to her cheek and, her eyes now aside and high, drew a strong, firm bow across the strings. When she did this she drew out the heart and soul from the body of David Joslin.

But David Joslin never really had heard the violin before. Of actual music he knew nothing. He had never heard a master of any instrument in all his life. But the sound of the violin itself, last keen climax in this atmosphere of exhilaration, where now the young spirit of this one fragile girl commanded the strong masculine spirit of all these massed men—for David Joslin constituted an overwhelming experience.

She finished her number, and when the roar of applause had ceased turned to her associate, who seated herself at the piano. They both sang—one of their duets; and as part of this Polly Pendleton herself danced—whirling about in pirouettes where her toes seemed scarce to find a footing, her round, strong limbs insouciantly exposed. She was but the spirit of youth, of life, of joy.

Now certain of the critical began to demand something known earlier as especially delectable.

“Sing us the real one, Polly!” they cried. “Sing us ‘The Only Man,’ why don’t you?”

“Yes; that’s it—that’s it—give us ‘The Only Man,’ Polly;” and vigorous handclapping ensued.

She stood facing them again at the little raised dais, her lips parted, her white teeth visible under her short, smiling upper lip. She was always eager to please, counting not the cost of herself—a rich and generous soul indeed was hers. Not so much her fault as ours was it that she was here, one of the sacrifices, the perishing imperishables of the world.

But Polly began to sing. The words matter little. It was the chorus which had brought her fame. She left the dais now, and advanced down the long table, her whole face a-laugh. Her eyes were fixed on a certain large, red-faced and very bald gentleman who sat halfway down the table at the left. Him she approached, singing as she came. She bent above him, put an arm about his face, a hand under his chin, and drew his head back as she bent above and sang to him.

“For you are my Baby!” sang Polly Pendleton. “You are my Baby! You’re the only, only, only man for me.”

Roars of laughter greeted this. They sang in chorus with her: “You’re the only, only, only man for me!”

“Come here, Polly,” called this man and that. “This way! You certainly are the only girl for me.”

But Polly Pendleton was back at the head of the table once more, still singing, still light of foot, still gay of song. She stood and faced them just for a moment. Something she saw which seemed to arrest her own attention—a grave, unsmiling face, with eyes like coals, a white face which looked straight at hers....

It was no more than a pace or two for Polly to reach the head of the table, to push a hand out against the raised one of Jimmy Haddon as he sat there flushed and laughing. The next instant she had stopped, and with the audacity of her very nature, so used to being allowed its own freakish will, she passed an arm about the head of David Joslin, a hand beneath his chin. She drew his white face back, looked down into his eyes, and sang—for a little while at least—“You’re the only, only, only man for me!”

Something in the tense tableau they saw—some note, undefinable, caused every man of that virile assemblage to cease his laughter and applause. They stared. They saw the great hands of the man close tight about the white wrists of Polly Pendleton. She ceased to stroke the strong hair of David Joslin, and stood back, finishing her song out of touch and out of tune. Some thought her voice quavered just a little. But she sprang back tiptoe again upon the little dais, and finished boldly—yes, and added thereto the notes of her violin. None the less, there had been a scene. Someone had not played the game. And they must take care of Polly.

They broke into applause. Someone started to pass a plate down the table. It was heaped up with money, in great part yellow in color. Coins fell on the floor—but there were no small silver ones. Some near by flung money in the general direction of the little platform where the two young women stood, smiling and bowing deeply—smiling at what they knew to be the success of their little offerings that evening.

“Here you go, Polly!” as one man after another cast toward her something folded. And Polly, grave and a trifle white now, leaving her associate bowing on the stage, passed down the aisle, met the heaped plate on its way, stopped here and stopped there, laughing and talking, chattering like some innocent child, picking up money—money—more money than David Joslin had thought there was in all the world. He alone gave nothing, for he had naught to give—only the happiness and peace of a human soul.

There was so much tribute that Polly made great show of thrusting part of it beneath her garter, till she could hold no more in that fashion. Some she thrust into her bosom, and then, turning, carried the rest of it to her partner, who happily was provided with a reticule.

Everybody laughed—everybody was pleased. It had cost them very little—perhaps a few hundred dollars—to make these two girls feel that they had made a hit. The wine was excellent. Everything had been splendid in every way. The cost? Why, what Jimmy Haddon had done for them in bringing this geezer here to tell them about their property would bring them more than ten thousand times the cost of the banquet, or the cost of the whole investment.

And so, after a time, the banquet ended, very late—ended, indeed, when Polly Pendleton and her friend, laughing and kissing their hands—Polly with her violin tucked under her arm and her cloak over all—turned once more to the door of the crystal and gold room of the Williston banquet suite. Men rose and waved serviettes at them, shouted good-by, asked them to come again. Haddon himself walked with Polly Pendleton to the door, kissed her hand, bowed goodnight.

As he turned back he saw standing, staring at him fixedly, the tall, white-faced figure of the mountaineer, whom he had utterly forgotten. The eyes of David Joslin were like coals.

“Some girl, eh—what?” said Haddon admiringly to his uncouth friend.

But Joslin made him no reply. What he had seen, what he had felt that night, was epochal, abysmal for him. He had looked into her eyes. He had seen her face framed in her dark hair—had caught the very fragrance of her hair itself. He was mad.

A motor car stood below, waiting for the popular team of Pendleton and Stanton. It whirled them now far uptown, to the little buffet flat which made their home. Nina, matter-of-fact as usual, busied herself about her preparations for the close of the day’s work. But, singularly enough, Polly, usually riante and active to the very last moment of the day, sat, cigarette in hand, silent, somewhat triste.

“What’s the matter, Polly?—Why don’t you get ready?—I’m sleepy as an owl. What are you wolfing about?”

“What makes you ask that, Nina?”

“Well, it’s something.”

Silence for a time, and then Polly spoke. “How do you think it went to-night, Nina?”

“Well, all I’ve got to say,” replied that worthy young woman, “if it went this well about one or two more nights a week or a month, we could retire and live along the Sound like ladies the rest of our lives.”

“I wish it was all back,” said Polly Pendleton, somberly.

“What do you mean?”

“Why, the money.”

“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Nina Stanton, staring at her partner. “What’s the matter with you, Polly? Have you gone crazy? What’s set you thinking this way? Of all things!”

“Well, it was that man, maybe. He mighty near queered me. It’s always a man, you know—a girl can’t get away from that.”

Nina still looked at her in wonderment. “You’re out of your head, kid,” said she. “If anyone in little old New York ought to be happy to-night, it’s you, sitting right there grouching like you are. They didn’t see me—I wasn’t there at all. You were the whole works. I hate to take the money from you—and I wouldn’t if I didn’t know you’d only spend it. I have to watch you like a mother, kid.”

But Polly sat, shaking her head in somber discontent, the little blue rings of her cigarette rising undisturbed before her.

“Who was he, Nina?” she asked after a time.

“Who was who? The big bald-face guy down the table?—that was Rankin of Rankin and Swan. He acted like a good sport. As for Jimmy Haddon, he must have chipped in fifty, anyways.”

But Polly was shaking her head from side to side.

“Oh, of course, you mean the reuben at the head of the table you were joshing. It was the hit of the evening.”

“Was it, though?” said Polly vaguely.

“The hit of the evening, kid. That’s what brought them across.”

“Well,” said Polly, “it was a raw deal for him, I suppose. Look here.” She held up her wrist. It showed a blue line about it. “I never felt a man’s hand like that in all my life. He could have broken my arm if he’d wanted to.” She pushed a bracelet reflectively up and down across the bruised ring which the clutch of Joslin’s fingers had left upon her white skin.

“Oh, I guess he liked it all right,” commented Nina casually. “They mostly do.”

“That’s the trouble,” rejoined Polly sagely. “I can’t tell how it was, but somehow that man made me feel ashamed! There was something in his face—I can’t tell you what. Ever since, I’ve been feeling as if this money didn’t belong to us. I’ve a notion to give you my share, Nina.”

“You can’t, kid. I’ve always been on the level with you. I’ll take you over my knee and give you a spanking now if you don’t shut up. You talk silly. An ordinary hayseed from the hills—you better be thinking of Rankin with his private yachts, or little old Jimmy, your solid. You can’t complain. You’d better be content with what you got.”

“What do you mean, Nina? I only say I feel sort of ashamed. I never felt my skirts were short before in all my life. I did then.”

Nina only turned with a short laugh as she stooped to unfasten her own shoes in her progress towards her night toilet. Polly arose and went to the panel where protruded the handle of the wall bed which these two loyal and thrifty partners occupied in common. She pulled down the bed, went to the little wardrobe for her own night robe, and, moodily silent, prepared herself for sleep. At last she paused.

“Nina,” she said again, with a certain imperative quality in her tone.

“What is it, kid?” demanded her good-humored friend.

“You know what I think?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t think you think at all.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. Sometimes I think I’ve had about enough of this sort of thing. I’m sore on it. It makes me sick. All those men——”

“But if it was the ‘only, only, only man’?” grinned Nina.

“I wonder,” began Polly to herself—“I wonder now——”

But what she wondered she did not vouchsafe. It was some time later, in the darkness of the night, that Nina felt a hand upon her arm, shaking her.

“What’s the idea, kid?” she said sleepily. “Can’t you let a fellow sleep? I’m almost dead.”

“Nina, tell me!” demanded Polly, a strange earnestness in her voice. “Am I bad? Nina—tell me—am I as bad as that?”

“Oh, shut up, kid,” said Nina, bored. “Go on to sleep. There’s bats in your garret to-night, sure thing.”