Polly tried to save him from a fall, but he threw off her rescuing hands; and thus he was falling to his ungraceful finish, when he managed to free one foot and planted it on the rug as a balance. But the basin with its wet porcelain bottom kept sliding ever farther away, and Tom still rolled in the swaddling robes suddenly sat down unceremoniously upon the floor.
Polly faintly screamed when the basin overturned and the mustard water ran in numerous streamlets across the waxed wood and center rug. Just at this critical moment, Mrs. Latimer came back to give her son the dose of quinine.
"Why, Tom! Why are you sitting on the floor?" asked she, in amazement.
That was the last straw. Polly had to smother a laugh but Tom flared out and the thick denunciations of all the female sex, particularly western girls, would have driven such a girl mad with anger. But Polly understood her friend too well to believe a word he said.
Even while he still hurled every expletive he could remember and try to enunciate, Polly sprang over to help Mrs. Latimer raise the beswaddled young man back into the chair. He fought off her assistance, but she stubbornly held on to his arms until he was seated in a proper position once more.
Then she said: "Tom dear, I'm so sorry you have had such a wretched Christmas Day. Had we but known you had such a cold we would have called and taken you home with us. But now that Christmas is over, and I haven't had time to say a word to you, I'll just whisper that, as a sort of late greeting: 'If I don't find anyone I like better than you, during the next two years, I'll make a partnership proposition to you.'"
"Oh, Bolly! Whad do you mean?" gasped Tom, expectation high once more.
"I like you better than any other friend I ever had, Tom, but I am determined to try business first. Then, in two years' time if you are still of the same mind as now, I will consider what you have so often planned. But not before then. Until that time we will be the best of good pals."
"Oh, Bolly! Whad a Gridsmad's gifd you habe giben me!" exclaimed Tom, his face shining radiantly with love and vaseline.
It was very late when the Fabian party reached home that Christmas night; thus there were no confidences given or taken between the girls until the following morning. To Eleanor's keen sight Polly appeared ill at ease; and in the morning, after breakfast, the cloud seemed heavier than before. Then Eleanor decided to find out what unpleasant experience had occurred while at Latimers.