so intangible that Polly herself did not realize it, although Mrs. Wharton did.
"I suppose you are not sleepy, dear, because you are sitting here thinking that never in the whole world was there ever a mother so narrow and so dictatorial as I am," Mrs. Wharton began. "Oh, I have been in bed, but I have been lying awake for the past hour looking at myself with Polly's eyes."
Polly frowned, shaking her head, yet her mother went on without appearing to notice her.
"I wonder if you think that I have no realization of the wonderful opportunity I have just made you refuse. Do you think, Polly, that I don't appreciate what it must mean to a girl like you to have made a friend of a great woman like Margaret Adams? And to have her so desire your companionship that she has asked you to be her guest during her summer abroad? Why such a chance does not come to one girl in a hundred thousand and yet I have made you give it up!"
With a little protesting gesture Polly stretched out her hand. "Then let us not discuss it any further, mother of mine," she demanded. "I promised you not to speak of it again after our talk the other day and I am going to exact the same promise of you."
The girl shut her lips together in a tight line of scarlet and all unconsciously began rocking herself slowly backward and forward with her expression turned inside instead of out, as her sister Mollie used sometimes to say. But Mrs. Wharton leaned over, and putting her finger under Polly's chin tilted it back until her eyes were upturned toward hers.
"But was I fair to you, dear? Have I decided what was best for you, as well as for Mollie and me? We have not spoken of it; we have both felt that silence was the wisest course; but tonight I should like to know whether, when the three years of your promise to me have passed, do you still intend going upon the stage?" Mrs. Wharton asked.
"Would you mind so very, very much?" Polly inquired quietly. And then with a sudden rush of confidence, which she had never before shown in any of their talks together on this subject, Polly faced their old difference of opinion squarely. "It has always been hard for me to understand, mother, why you are so opposed to my trying to become an actress. You are broad-minded enough on other subjects. You have worked for your own living and ours; and you were willing enough to have Sylvia, who is younger than I am and who will be very rich some day, go away and study to become a trained nurse, just because she believed it her calling. Yet because I want to learn to act, why the whole stage and everything connected with it is anathema. You do not even like Miss Margaret Adams as much as you would if she were in some other kind of work. Oh, of course I appreciate that people used to feel that no woman could be good and be on the stage, but no sensible person thinks that nowadays." Polly stopped abruptly. "I don't mean to be rude, mother," she concluded.
But Mrs. Wharton nodded. "Please go on. I came in tonight to find out just what you were thinking. I don't believe you realize how little you have explained your real feeling to me on this subject since that unfortunate time in New York."
"I didn't want to trouble you," again Polly hesitated. "It is hardly worth while doing it now. Because honestly I have not made up my mind just how to answer the question that you asked me a few minutes ago. Whether at the end of another year, when you have agreed to let me do as I like, I shall still insist upon going upon the stage, knowing that you and Mollie are at heart unwilling to have me, I can't tell. Perhaps I shall give up and stay on here at Woodford and maybe marry some one I don't care about and then be sorry ever afterwards."
Instead of replying Mrs. Wharton got up and walked several times backwards and forwards across the length of the room, not glancing toward the girl who still sat before the fire with her hands clasped tightly over her knees. But Polly had small doubt where her mother's thoughts were. And a few moments afterwards she too rose and the next instant pulled her mother down on a cushion before the fire, and resting close beside her put her head on her shoulder.
"Dear, you were mistaken when you came in and found me awake," Polly explained, "in supposing that I was thinking of my own disappointment in not being allowed to make the journey with Miss Adams or feeling hurt or angry with you because you decided against it. Really, I never dreamed in the first place that you would be willing. Still, I was thinking of asking you to let me break my word to you after all! You said that I was to stay here in Woodford for three years, and yet I want you to let me go away somewhere very soon. I don't care where, any place will do."
Now for the first time since the beginning of their conversation Mrs. Wharton appeared mystified and deeply hurt.
"Is your own home so disagreeable to you, Polly, that you would rather go anywhere than stay with us?" she queried. And then to her further surprise, turning she discovered that tears were standing unshed in Polly's eyes and that her lips were trembling.
"I don't know how to tell you, mother. It is all so mixed up and so uncertain in my own mind and so foolish. But I wonder if you have ever thought that Mollie liked Billy Webster better than our other friends?"
"Mollie?" Mrs. Wharton could hardly summon her thoughts back from the subject which had lately absorbed them, to follow what she believed a quickly changing idea of Polly's. "Why, yes, I think I have," she answered slowly. "But I have never let the supposition trouble me. Mollie is so young and her deepest affections are for you and me. Besides, Billy is a fine fellow and perhaps when the time comes I shall not be quite so selfish with her."
But Polly's cheeks were so crimson that she had to put up her cold hands to try and cool them.
"And you have always believed that Billy almost hated me, haven't you?"
Mrs. Wharton laughed. "Well, I have never thought a great deal about it, except that you argued a great deal about nothing and that each one of you was determined to influence the other without producing the smallest result."
"Yes, mother, and that is what makes what I want to tell you so horrid and silly," Polly went on, intentionally making a screen for her face with her dark hair. "Because Billy Webster has a perfectly absurd idea that he cares for me, simply because he wishes to manage me. And – and he was tiresome enough to tell me so this afternoon."
Surprise and consternation for the moment kept Mrs. Wharton silent. "But you, Polly?" she managed to inquire finally. "How do you feel? What did you answer him?"
Then for an instant the girl's former expression changed and the old Irish contrariness of spirit hovered in a half smile about her lips.
"Oh, I told him that I did not like him any better than I had in the beginning of our acquaintance and that I had only been nicer to him now and then lately because he was your friend and Mollie's. And no matter what happened to me, if I never, never stirred a foot out of Woodford, I should never dream of marrying him even when I am a hundred years old."
A sigh of some kind escaped Mrs. Wharton, partly of relief and partly of annoyance.
"Then why should you wish to go away, dear?" she queried. "If you said all that, surely Billy will never trouble you again!"
A characteristic shrug was Polly's first answer. "Oh, Billy only cares about me because he can't have me," she replied the next minute. "But he insists that he will go on trying to win me until doomsday. Still it isn't either about Billy or about me that I am thinking at present. Can't you understand, mother, without my having to explain? It is so hard to say. It's Mollie! Not for anything in the world would I have her feelings hurt or have her think that I had come between her and her friendship for Billy."
But Mrs. Wharton's manner was immediately quiet and reassuring. "Mollie would never think anything unfair of you, Polly. And perhaps it will be better for you to speak of this to her. If Mollie has had any false impression, if her feeling for Billy has been anything but simple friendliness, now it will not be difficult for her to adjust herself.
