Molly hardly felt intimate enough with her to go into the subject of her own poverty and answered briefly:
“Not entirely.”
Millicent was not famous for generosity and the basket of red roses sent to Molly on the night of the junior play had been her one outburst; but she was determined to have Molly go home with her at any cost.
“Because,” she continued, “if it’s a question of clothes, I can arrange that perfectly. My dresses will fit you if they are lengthened and—well, there’ll be plenty of clothes. Don’t bother about that. Your yellow dress is good enough for anything——”
“I should say it was,” thought Molly, rather indignantly. “Good enough for the likes of you or anybody else.”
“I’ll lend you my mink coat and turban,” went on this munificent young person, “and I have a big black velvet hat that would look awfully well on you. Now, you must come, please. I want you to see my studio at the top of the house. To tell you the truth, I’m rather lonesome in New York. I don’t know any girls well, because I’ve never stayed at one school long enough to make friends.”
“What’s the reason of that?” asked Molly.
“Oh, I always get tired or something,” answered the other carelessly. “But say you’ll come, do, please,” she went on pathetically. Then, unable to stifle her grand airs, she said: “I doubt if you have such fine houses as ours in the south.”
“Oh, no,” answered Molly, quickly, “I doubt if we have. Our homes are very old and simple. The only works of art are family portraits. We have no tapestry or statuary. The house I was born in,” she went on half-smiling to herself, “was built by my great-grandfather. Most of the furniture came down from him, too. Some of it’s quite decrepit now, but we keep it polished up. My earliest recollection is rubbing the mahogany. You would doubtless think our house very empty and plain. We have some old crimson damask curtains in the parlor, but the rest of the curtains are made of ten-cent dimity. There is no furnace. We depend on coal fires in the bedrooms and wood fires in the other rooms and we nearly freeze if there’s a cold winter. We have no plumbing. Every member of the family has his own tub and there are six extra ones for company. A little colored boy named Sam brings us hot water every morning for our baths. He gets it from a big boiler attached to the kitchen stove, and when we are done bathing he has to carry it all down again. Rather a nuisance, isn’t it? But Sam doesn’t mind. Oh, I daresay you’d think our house was a kind of a hovel.” Molly paused and looked at Millicent strangely. There was a hidden fire in her deep blue eyes. “As for me,” she said, “no palace in all New York or anywhere else could be as beautiful to me as my home.”
Millicent looked uncomfortable.