“I guess she has been reading the life of Josephine. You know she made a pretty lady, of whom she was jealous, sit beside her on a green sofa, which set off her own white dress and spoilt the blue one of her guest,” answered Polly, busy with the flowers.

“Trix never reads anything; you are the one to pick up clever little stories. I’ll remember and use this one. Am I done? Yes, that is charming, isn’t it, Polly?” and Fan rose to inspect the success of Monsieur’s long labour.

“You know I don’t appreciate a stylish coiffure as I ought, so I like your hair in the bold way best. But this is ‘the thing’, I suppose, and not a word must be said.”

“Of course it is. Why, child, I have frizzed and burnt my hair so that I look like an old maniac with it in its natural state, and have to repair damages as well as I can. Now put the flowers just here,” and Fanny laid a pink camelia in a nest of fuz, and stuck a spray of daphne straight up at the back of her head.

“Oh Fan, don’t, it looks horridly so!” cried Polly, longing to add a little beauty to her friend’s sallow face by a graceful adjustment of the flowers.

“Can’t help it, that’s the way, and so it must be,” answered Fan, planting another sprig half-way up the tower.

Polly groaned, and offered no more suggestions as the work went on; but when Fan was finished from top to toe, she admired all she honestly could, and tried to keep her thoughts to herself. But her frank face betrayed her, for Fanny turned on her suddenly, saying,—

“You may as well free your mind, Polly, for I see by your eyes that something don’t suit.”

“I was only thinking of what grandma once said, ‘that modesty had gone out of fashion,’ ” answered Polly, glancing at the waist of her friend’s dress, which consisted of a belt, a bit of lace, and a pair of shoulder straps. Fanny laughed good-naturedly, saying, as she clasped her necklace, “If I had such shoulders as yours, I shouldn’t care what the fashion was. Now don’t preach, but put my cloak on nicely and come along, for I’m to meet Tom and Trix, and promised to be there early.”

Polly was to be left at home after depositing Fan at Belle’s.

“I feel as if I was going myself,” she said, as they rolled along.

“I wish you were, and you would be, Polly, if you weren’t such a resolute thing. I’ve teased, and begged, and offered anything I have if you’ll only break your absurd vow, and come and enjoy yourself.”

“Thank you; but I won’t, so don’t trouble your kind heart about me; I’m all right,” said Polly, stoutly.

But when they drew up before the lighted house, and she found herself in the midst of the pleasant stir of festivity, the coming and going of carriages, the glimpses of bright colours, forms, and faces, the bursts of music, and a general atmosphere of gaiety, Polly felt that she wasn’t all right, and as she drove away for a dull evening in her lonely little room, she just cried as heartily as any child denied a stick of candy.

“It’s dreadful wicked of me, but I can’t help it,” she sobbed to herself, in the corner of the carriage. “That music sets me all in a twitter, and I should have looked nice in Fan’s blue tarlatan, and I know I could behave as well as anyone, and have lots of partners, though I’m not in that set. Oh, just one good gallop with Mr. Sydney or Tom! No, Tom wouldn’t ask me there, and I wouldn’t accept if he did. Oh, me! oh, me! I wish I was as old and homely, and good and happy, as Miss Mills!”

So Polly made her moan, and by the time she got home, was just in the mood to go to bed and cry herself to sleep, as girls have a way of doing when their small afflictions become unbearable.