Item: A distinctly saucy nose; an aggressive, impertinent, spirited little nose, with a few freckles on it; a nose that probably leads its possessor into trouble occasionally.
Item: Two bright eyes, a trifle overproud and willful, perhaps, but candid and full of laughter.
Item: A head of brilliant, auburn hair; lively, independent, frisky hair, each glittering thread standing out by itself and asserting its own individuality; tempestuous hair that never "stays put;" capricious hair that escapes hairpins and comes down unexpectedly; hoydenish hair that makes the meekest hats look daring.
For the rest, a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered hands tanned a very honest brown,--the hands of a person who loves beauty.
Polly Oliver's love of beautiful things was a passion, and one that had little gratification; but luckily, though good music, pictures, china, furniture, and "purple and fine linen" were all conspicuous by their absence, she could feast without money and without price on the changeful loveliness of the Santa Ynez mountains, the sapphire tints of the placid Pacific, and the gorgeous splendor of the Californian wild-flowers, so that her sense of beauty never starved.
Her hand was visible in the modest sitting-room where she now sat with her mother; for it was pretty and homelike, although its simple decorations and furnishings had been brought together little by little during a period of two years; so that the first installments were all worn out, Polly was wont to remark plaintively, before the last additions made their appearance.
The straw matting had Japanese figures on it, while a number of rugs covered the worn places, and gave it an opulent look. The table-covers, curtains, and portières were of blue jean worked in outline embroidery, and Mrs. Oliver's couch had as many pillows as that of an oriental princess; for Polly's summers were spent camping in a cañon, and she embroidered sofa-cushions and draperies with frenzy during these weeks of out-of-door life.
Upon the cottage piano was a blue Canton ginger-jar filled with branches of feathery bamboo that spread its lace-like foliage far and wide over the ceiling and walls, quite covering the large spot where the roof had leaked. Various stalks of tropical-looking palms, distributed artistically about, concealed the gaping wounds in the walls, inflicted by the Benton children, who had once occupied this same apartment. Mexican water-jars, bearing peacock feathers, screened Mr. Benton's two favorite places for scratching matches. The lounge was the sort of lounge that looks well only between two windows, but Polly was obliged to place it across the corner where she really needed the table, because in that position it shielded from the public view the enormous black spots on the wall where Reginald Benton had flung the ink-bottle at his angel sister Pansy Belle. Then there was an umbrella-lamp bestowed by a boarder whom Mrs. Oliver had nursed through typhoid fever; a banjo; plenty of books and magazines; and an open fireplace, with a great pitcher of yellow wild-flowers standing between the old-fashioned brass andirons.
Little Miss Oliver's attitude on the question of the boarders must stand quite without justification.
"It is a part of Polly," sighed her mother, "and must be borne with Christian fortitude."