"Oh I love to burn the candle at both ends," she answered.
"No doubt you do, my dear. We have all liked to do that at one time or another. But at this rate you will light your candle in the middle, too."
"You cannot light a candle in the middle," said Dolly with great decision.
"If anybody could, you could," said Marion, watching her as she had often done of late and wondering if any change had come into the young girl's life. "Seriously, my dear, I am anxious about you. I wish you would take care of yourself, or get married, or something."
"If you will tell me what that 'something' is I will get it at once," said Dolly, with a smile that had a tinge of sadness in it. "I ask nothing better."
"Oh anything!" exclaimed Mrs. Darche. "Get nervous prostration or anything that is thoroughly fashionable and gives no trouble, and then go somewhere and rest for a month."
"My dear child," cried Dolly with a laugh, "I cannot think of being so old-fashioned as to have nervous prostration. Let me see. I might be astigmatic. That seems to be the proper thing nowadays. Then I could wear glasses and look the character of the school-ma'am. Then I could say I could not dance because I could not see, because of course I could not dance in spectacles. But for the matter of that, my dear, you need not lecture me. You are as bad as I am, and much worse—yours is a much harder life than mine."
Just as Dolly was about to draw a comparison between her own existence and her friend's, the door opened and Stubbs entered the room bearing a dozen enormous roses, of the kind known as American beauties. Dolly, who had a passion for flowers, sprang up, and seized upon them with an exclamation of delight.
"What beauties! What perfect beauties!" she said. "You lucky creature! Who in the world sends you such things?"
Mrs. Darche had risen from her seat and had buried her face in the thick blossoms while Dolly held them.