Sam bent and kissed her. “Marry me,” he demanded.
Polly burst out laughing. “That’s Sam’s remedy for all ills, Thurley. When Ernestine had to move out of her old apartment, Sam was engaged to her until she was satisfactorily settled in her new one. It bucked her up no end.”
Thurley shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ve not come on enough really to entertain you—do call a year from now.”
Sam laid his tired hand on her head in mock solemnity. “Don’t let Hobart cheat you of what you deserve—remember, every woman has the right to at least one trousseau!” After which they left, Polly calling back something as to the time of their meeting on Christmas afternoon.
Thurley stole to Miss Clergy’s door but the little ghost lady was fast asleep.
“Every woman has the right to at least one trousseau,”—she wished he had not said it. She did not want even deep-down, hidden regrets.... French exercises, Italian opera scores, singing lessons, English reading selections, dancing, fencing, horseback, social etiquette, makeup, costuming, stage directions—pretend, pretend, _pretend_ things ... and they were trimming the church at the Corners—Dan and Lorraine this year, Lorraine with her ring.... What strange people, at odds with each other and their own selves—what queer, detached lives—what remarkable theories, fantastically expressed! where was the saneness of it, the rhythm—that was it—the rhythm? Would she experience it and be satisfied after she had made her bow to the public? Could the ooze always answer the requirements of her savage young heart?
After the Christmas matinée, when Thurley with eyes as large as saucers, so Polly reported, had watched Sam play a difficult rôle in superb fashion and had taken tea with him in his dressing room, she returned alone to the hotel.
Polly was due at a Greenwich Village affair, Caleb was with Collin in the country, Ernestine in Chicago practising scales, as her letter to Thurley would intimate, and at Birge’s Corners ... ah, that was the ooze, it was no longer real! So Thurley came into the dingy sitting room—at least it now seemed dingy—to find that Miss Clergy had suffered an attack of neuralgia and had been ordered off to bed. The high tea in Sam’s dressing-room had robbed her of her appetite, so she did not go downstairs for dinner but changed her party frock for a schoolgirl blue serge and stoically settled herself at her books. She promised herself that after she had diligently studied she would go into the ooze and celebrate her real Christmas!