However, when the three women finally started east there was nothing unusual in the appearance of any one of them. For by this time Polly's protégé was dressed like any other girl of her age with her hair neatly braided. There only remained her peculiar fashion of staring.
Richard Hunt saw the little party off. He expected to be in New York later in the winter and promised to write and inquire what had become of Bobbin. However, he did not promise to come to Woodford to see Miss O'Neill, although Polly more than once invited him.
CHAPTER XIII
"A Little Rift Within the Lute"
"BUT, my dearest sister, what is the matter with Betty? You were perfectly right, she isn't one bit like herself and neither is Anthony. I don't even believe she was particularly glad to see me when I stopped over in Concord with her for a few days."
Polly O'Neill was in her sister Mollie's big, sunshiny living room in her splendid old farm-house near Sunrise Cabin. There was no specially handsome furniture in the room, perhaps nothing particularly beautiful in itself, yet Polly had just announced that it was the very homiest room in all the world and for that reason the nicest.
There were low book-shelves on two sides of the room, for though Mollie never read anything except at night when her husband read aloud to her, Billy Webster kept up with all the latest books, fiction, history, travel, besides subscribing to most of the magazines in the country. Indeed, although he and Polly often quarreled good-naturedly, Polly was openly proud of her brother-in-law, who had turned out to be a more intelligent and capable man than she had ever expected.
But besides Billy's books there were lots of old chairs, some of them rather worn, but all delightfully comfortable; a great big table, now littered with children's toys; the old-fashioned couch upon which Polly was reposing; some ornaments belonging to ancestral Websters and a tall grandfather's clock, besides half a dozen engravings and etchings on the walls.