“You don’t mean it?” said Rose, her blue eyes beginning to sparkle.
“Yes, I do, absolutely and truly mean it.”
“And you will sell your things—your lovely things?”
“My things, my lovely, lovely things must be sold.”
“But not your clothes? Your new sealskin jacket, for instance?”
Polly made a wry face for a moment. Putting her hand into her pocket she pulled out Spilman’s and Madame Clarice’s two bills.
“I owe a lot,” she said, looking with a rueful countenance at the sum total. “Yes, I even fear the sealskin must go. I don’t want to part with it; dad gave it me just before I came here.”
“It’s a lovely seal,” said Annie Day, “and it seems a sin to part with it; it’s cut in the most stylish way too, with those high shoulders.”
“Don’t praise it, please,” said Polly, lying back in her chair, and covering her eyes with her hand. “It cuts like a knife to part with dad’s last present. Well, I’m rightly punished. What a fool I was to get all those Japanese things from Spilman, and that fancy ball-dress for the theatricals. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
“Perhaps you won’t want to part with your seal, dear,” said Lucy, who was not so greedy as some of the other girls, and really pitied Polly. “You have so many beautiful things without that, that you will be sure to realise a good bit of money.”