"Our Camp Fire days were never irresponsible ones for me, Betty child," Polly responded, gazing thoughtfully around the dear, dismantled room. "Often I feel I never learned so much at any other time in my life as I did then. But the fact remains that you are not happy as I want you to be, and I wish with all my heart that you loved me enough to tell me the reason why. You see, Betty, I am rather a lonely, good-for-nothing old maid and I can't expect much for myself. But you have absolutely everything in the world any woman could wish. And I think it is positively wicked of you not to be the same gay, sweet Betty."
At this Polly got out a small handkerchief and began dabbing her Irish blue eyes, that were shedding tears partly from the smoke of the fire and partly from a general sense of discouragement.
In return Betty stared back at her with equal severity. "What a perfectly absurd fashion for you to talk, Polly O'Neill!" she replied. "You know perfectly well that if you had chosen to marry you might have had what I have. Only you didn't want to marry; you wanted a career and to be famous and to make money instead. Well, haven't you succeeded? Is that what you are crying about?"
Polly nodded. "I expect there isn't any law about wanting everything, is there, Betty Ashton Graham? So long as women are women, no matter what they may try to do or be, there will be times when they cry for nice husbands and babies. But I wasn't crying about me, it was about you," she continued ungrammatically and with her usual logic. "Here you are growing more beautiful every day you live. Everybody loves you; you have hundreds of friends, the two most fascinating children in the world, except Mollie's, and a husband who is about the best and cleverest man in the state, and who simply adores you, and yet you are wretched and cross and unlike yourself. I watched you yesterday, Betty, and you never smiled a single time when you thought no one was looking and you never once spoke to Anthony. The poor fellow appeared dreadfully troubled too. Whatever is the matter, I am much sorrier for him than I am for you," Polly concluded somewhat vindictively.
"Oh!" Betty faltered and then was so silent that Polly humped her stool nearer until her shoulder touched that of her friend.
"That last remark wasn't true, of course, Betty," Polly apologized. "For if Anthony is really a snake in the grass and treats you badly when he looks so noble and kind, why, I shall simply come to Concord and tell him what I think of him right in the Governor's mansion. I don't care whether he puts me into the state prison or not."
Then, although she had been tremblingly near tears herself the moment before, Betty was compelled to laugh. Whoever could do anything else in Polly O'Neill's society? The thought of Anthony's thrusting a very noisy and protesting Polly into prison was a picture to dispel almost any degree of gloom.
Betty slipped her arm across her friend's shoulder. "No, dear, you must not think Anthony is unkind to me; it isn't that," she responded slowly. "Only I don't believe he exactly 'adores' me as much as he used to. Sometimes men get tired of their wives."
"Nonsense, goose! What put that notion in your head?" Polly returned lightly, although she was a little frightened by her friend's reply.
Really she had not believed that anything could have come between Anthony and Betty. Her suggestion had only been made in order to induce Betty to deny it. The next moment she leaned over and put several fresh logs on the fire.