CHAPTER XVII—A Reunion
Next morning at half past ten o’clock Polly O’Neill was sitting upright in bed in the room at her hotel with Betty on one side, Mollie on the other and Sylvia at the foot, gazing rather searchingly upon the object of their present devotion.
Polly was wearing a pale pink dressing jacket trimmed with a great deal of lace and evidently quite new. Indeed it had been purchased with the idea of celebrating this great occasion. The girl’s cheeks were as crimson as they had been on the stage the night before and her eyes were as shining. She was talking with great rapidity and excitement.
“Yes, it is perfectly thrilling and delightful, Mollie Mavourneen, and I never was so happy in my life, now that you know all about me and are not really angry,” Polly exclaimed gayly. “But I can tell you it wasn’t all honey and roses last winter, working all alone and being lonely and homesick and miserable most of the time. No one praised me or sent me flowers then,” and the girl looked with perfectly natural vanity and satisfaction at the big box of roses that had just been opened and was still lying on her lap. On her bureau there were vases of fresh flowers and several other boxes on a nearby table.
“Well, it must be worth any amount of hard work and unhappiness to be so popular and famous,” Mollie murmured, glancing with heartfelt admiration and yet with a little wistfulness at her twin sister. “Just think, Polly dear, we are exactly the same age and used to do almost the same things; and now you are a celebrated actress and I’m just nobody at all. I am sorry I used to be so opposed to your going on the stage. I think it perfectly splendid now.”
With a laugh that had a slight quaver in it Polly threw an arm about her sister and hugged her close. “You silly darling, how you have always flattered me and how dearly I do love it!” she returned, looking with equal admiration at the soft roundness of Mollie’s girlish figure and the pretty dimples in her delicately pink cheeks. “I am not a celebrated actress in the least, sister of mine, just because I have succeeded in doing one little character part so that a few people, just a few people, like it. I do wonder what Margaret Adams thought of me. She did not say much last night. She is coming to see me presently, so I am desperately nervous over what she will say. One swallow does not make a career any more than it makes a summer. And as for daring to say you are nobody, Mollie O’Neill, I never heard such arrant nonsense in my life. For you know perfectly well that you are a thousand times prettier, more charming and more popular than I am, and everybody knows it except you. But, of course, you never have believed it in your life, you blessed little goose!” and Polly pinched her sister’s soft arm appreciatively. “I wish there was as much of me as there is of you for one thing, Mollie darling, your figure is a perfect dream and I’m nothing in the world but skin and bones,” Polly finished at last, drawing her dressing jacket more closely about her with a barely concealed shiver.
From the foot of the bed Sylvia was eyeing her severely. “Yes, we had already noticed that without your mentioning it, Polly,” she remarked dryly.
Her only answer was a careless shrugging of her thin shoulders, as Polly turned this time toward Betty.
“What makes you so silent, Princess? You are not vexed with me and only said you were not angry last night to spare my feelings?” Polly asked more seriously than she had yet spoken. Even though Polly might believe that she loved her sister better, yet she realized that they could never so completely understand each other and never have perhaps quite the same degree of spiritual intimacy as she had with her friend.
Betty took Polly’s outstretched hand and held it lightly.