Polly looked up, to see Betty Thurston.
“Do you know her?” she questioned in surprise.
“Of course not,” smiled Betty. “But I’m going to—if that hateful Ilga Barron doesn’t monopolize her all the tune.”
“But how did you know what her name is?” persisted Polly.
“Oh!” explained Betty, “I was up at Gladys Osborne’s Saturday, spending the day, and Gladys’s Aunt Julia was there there—she boards at The Trowbridge, you know, and she told us all about the Illingworths. They board there, too, Patricia and her mother. They aren’t stuck up a bit, though I guess they’re awfully rich. They came from ’way out West—I forget the name of the place. It’s where Patricia’s father’s got a mine. And she hasn’t ever been to school much, only studied with her mother, and rode horseback, and all that. Aunt Julia said she was coming to our school, and I think she’s lovely; don’t you?”
“Sweet as she can be!” agreed Polly.
“I know why Ilga pounced on her so quick,” confided Betty. “I’ll bet she heard me telling Lilith and some of the other girls that she was rich, and that’s just why. We were down in the dressing-room before school. If it hadn’t been for her we could have got acquainted this morning.”
“Well, there are more days coming,” laughed Polly philosophically. “That’s what mother always tells me, when I want to do a thing right then, and can’t.”
The talk passed to other matters, yet the eyes of both girls followed the new pupil as she and her companion strolled from room to room of the little suite. Here and there they would pause for a few words with some of Ilga’s friends, or to look from a window, and then move on again. The Senator’s daughter was assuredly doing the honors for the entire school.
Polly and Betty laid plans for “the next time,” but Polly kept her secret hope close hidden in her heart, not disclosing it even to David on the way home.