"
"What can you know about broken hearts and blighted beings?"
asked Sydney, smiling at the girl's pensive tone.
Polly glanced up at him and her face dimpled and shone again, as
she answered, laughing: "Not much; my time is to come."
"I can't imagine you walking about the world with your back hair
down, bewailing a hard-hearted lover," said Tom.
"Neither can I. That would n't be my way."
"No; Miss Polly would let concealment prey on her damask cheeks
and still smile on in the novel fashion, or turn sister of charity and
nurse the heartless lover through small-pox, or some other
contagious disease, and die seraphically, leaving him to the
agonies of remorse and tardy love."
Polly gave Sydney an indignant look as he said that in a slow
satirical way that nettled her very much, for she hated to be
thought sentimental.
"That 's not my way either," she said decidedly. "I 'd try to outlive
it, and if I could n't, I 'd try to be the better for it. Disappointment
need n't make a woman a fool.
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