dress, and the guitar trimmed with a fringe of narrow pink ribbons.
She was a dream, Margery! But she does n't sit there with her young
men when I am at school, nor when I am helping Ah Foy in the
dining-room, nor, of course, when we are at table. She sits there from
four to six in the afternoon and in the evening, the only times I have
with mamma in this room. We are obliged to keep the window closed,
lest we should overhear the conversation. That is tiresome enough in
warm weather. You see the other windows are shaded by the fig-trees,
so here we sit, in Egyptian darkness, mamma and I, during most of the
pleasant afternoons. And if anything ever came of it, we would n't
mind, but nothing ever does. There have been so many young men,--I
could n't begin to count them, but they have worn out the seats of four
chairs,--and why does n't one of them take her away? Then we could
have a nice, plain young lady who would sit quietly on the front steps
with the old people, and who would n't want me to carry messages for
her three times a day."

At the present moment, however, Miss Anita Ferguson, clad in a black
habit, with a white rose in her buttonhole, and a neat black derby with
a scarf of white _crêpe de chine_ wound about it, had gone on the mesa
for a horseback ride, so Polly and Margery had borrowed the cosy corner
for a chat.

Margery was crocheting a baby's afghan, and Polly was almost obscured
by a rumpled, yellow dress which lay in her lap.

"You observe my favorite yellow gown?" she asked.

"Yes, what have you done to it?"