in some whimsical, back-handed fashion, or in a fleeting caress, which
came and was gone like the touch of a butterfly's wing.

Now, however, she took her friend's face between her two hands and
kissed her quietly, almost solemnly upon the line of her injury.

"Never say a thing like that to me again as long as you live, Betty
Ashton. Perhaps I haven't as much affection as other people. Mother
and Mollie are both insisting it lately. Still I know that----but how
silly we are to talk of it! You are not changed. Of course I am sorry
that your hair had to be cut off, but it will grow out again and the
scar will disappear. I wish I could get rid of my"--Polly
hesitated--"blemishes so easily," she finished.

Betty looked puzzled. "What do you mean? Sylvia says you are very
much better and that there is no reason why you should not get up. She
declares that it is only that you won't and that she does not intend
nursing you or letting any one else take care of you after a few days,
unless you do what Dr. Barton tells you. Sylvia is a dreadfully firm
person. She was quite angry with me when I said that I did not believe
you were well and that I was quite strong enough now to take care of
you and you should not get out of bed until you had entirely recovered."

"But I have entirely recovered and I am well and somehow I can't manage
to deceive Sylvia Wharton no matter how hard I try," Polly announced in
a half-amused and half-annoyed manner.

"Then why are you trying to?" Betty naturally queried. Of course one
never actually expected to understand Polly O'Neill's whims, but now
and then one of them appeared a trifle more mysterious than the others.
"If you are still tired and feel you prefer to remain in bed, that is a
sure sign you are not strong enough to get up, and Dr. Barton and
Sylvia ought to realize it," she continued, still on the defensive.

But Polly only smiled at her. "But, dear, I don't prefer to remain in
bed. I am so deadly bored with it that as soon as I am left alone I
get up and dance in the middle of the floor just to have a little
relief. Can't you and mother and Mollie understand (I don't believe
any one does except Sylvia) that I don't want to get up because I don't
want to have to face the music?"

Still the other girl looked puzzled.

"Can't you see that as long as I have been able to be sick nobody has
dared to say very much to me about my escapade in New York? Oh, of
course I k