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Page 7
_Item_: Two bright eyes, a trifle overproud and willful, perhaps, but
candid and full of laughter.
_Item_: A head of brilliant, auburn hair; lively, independent, frisky
hair, each glittering thread standing out by itself and asserting its
own individuality; tempestuous hair that never "stays put;" capricious
hair that escapes hairpins and comes down unexpectedly; hoydenish hair
that makes the meekest hats look daring.
For the rest, a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including
elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered
hands tanned a very honest brown,--the hands of a person who loves
beauty.
Polly Oliver's love of beautiful things was a passion, and one that had
little gratification; but luckily, though good music, pictures, china,
furniture, and "purple and fine linen" were all conspicuous by their
absence, she could feast without money and without price on the
changeful loveliness of the Santa Ynez mountains, the sapphire tints of
the placid Pacific, and the gorgeous splendor of the Californian
wild-flowers, so that her sense of beauty never starved.
Her hand was visible in the modest sitting-room where she now sat with
her mother; for it was pretty and homelike, although its simple
decorations and furnishings had been brought together little by little
during a period of two years; so that the first installments were all
worn out, Polly was wont to remark plaintively, before the last
additions made their appearance.
The straw matting had Japanese figures on it, while a number of rugs
covered the worn places, and gave it an opulent look. The
table-covers, curtains, and porti�res were of blue jean worked in
outline embroidery, and Mrs. Oliver's couch had as many pillows as that
of an oriental princess; for Polly's summers were spent camping in a
ca�on, and she embroidered sofa-cushions and draperies with frenzy
during these weeks of out-of-door life.
Upon the cottage piano was a blue Canton ginger-jar filled with
branches of feathery bamboo that spread its lace-like foliage far and
wide over the ceiling and walls, quite covering the large spot where
the roof had leaked. Various stalks of tropical-looking palms,
distributed artistically about, concealed the gaping wounds in the
walls, inflicted by the Benton children, who had once occupied this
same apartment. Mexican water-jars, bearing peacock feathers, screened
Mr. Benton's two favorite places for scratching matches. The lounge
was the sort of lounge that looks well only between two windows, but
Polly was obliged to place it across the corner where she really needed
the table, because in that position it shielded from the public view
the enormous black spots on the wall where Reginald Benton had flung
the ink-bottle at his angel sister Pansy Belle.
Then there was an umbrella-lamp bestowed by a boarder whom Mrs. Oliver
had nursed through typhoid fever; a banjo; plenty of books and
magazines; and an open fireplace, with a great pitcher of yellow
wild-flowers standing between the old-fashioned brass andirons.
Little Miss Oliver's attitude on the question of the boarders must
stand quite without justification.
"It is a part of Polly," sighed her mother, "and must be borne with
Christian fortitude."
Colonel Oliver had never fully recovered from a wound received in the
last battle of the civil war, and when he was laid to rest in a quiet
New England churchyard, so much of Mrs. Oliver's heart was buried with
him that it was difficult to take up the burden of life with any sort
of courage. At last her delicate health prompted her to take the baby
daughter, born after her husband's death, and go to southern
California, where she invested her small property in a house in Santa
Barbara. She could not add to her income by any occupation that kept
her away from the baby; so the boarders followed as a matter of course
(a house being suitable neither for food nor clothing), and a
constantly changing family of pleasant people helped her to make both
ends meet, and to educate the little daughter as she grew from babyhood
into childhood.
Now, as Polly had grown up among the boarders, most of whom petted her,
no one can account for her slightly ungrateful reception of their
good-will; but it is certain that the first time she was old enough to
be trusted at the table, she grew very red in the face, slipped down
from her high chair, and took her bowl of bread and milk on to the
porch. She was followed and gently reasoned with, but her only
explanation was that she did n't "yike to eat wiv so many peoples."
Persuasion bore no fruit, and for a long time Miss Polly ate in
solitary grandeur. Indeed, the feeling increased rather than
diminished, until the child grew old enough to realize her mother's
burden, when with passionate and protecting love she put her strong
young shoulders under the load and lifted her share, never so very
prettily or gracefully,--it is no use trying to paint a halo round
Polly's head,--but with a proud courage and a sort of desperate resolve
to be as good as she could, which was not very good, she would have
told you.
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