"I saw Polly with you just as we were leaving the hall," said Helen, "what did you say that she said?"
"She said, 'Why Randy Weston, you are staring at everybody and everything as if you'd never attended a concert before!'"
"How singularly rude," said Aunt Marcia, little pleased that Randy should be thus spoken to.
"And what did you say to that, Randy," asked Helen, wondering if Polly's speech had cut deeply.
With a frank smile Randy answered,—"I said, 'Well this is my first concert. Possibly you would be surprised if you had never before experienced such a pleasure.'"
Helen and her aunt were much amused that Randy could answer so readily a remark which was intended to embarrass her, and they realized that Randy's frankness in admitting herself a country girl quite unused to city pleasures, would disarm a girl like Polly, more successfully than any amount of artifice or pretense.
CHAPTER IX
A SCOTCH LINNET
The sky was a cold, leaden gray, and down from the mountains swept a pitiless wind, which whistled through the bare branches of the trees and tossed a few dried leaves before it, as it hurried on as if with a fixed determination to reach every corner of the village and chill everything which it could touch.