some flowers for the studio.

She found Flossie to be a fair, fluffy-haired, plump and pretty girl of
twenty, entirely pleased with herself and the world. It seemed to
Pollyooly that she gave herself airs. She came away with the flowers,
finding the ecstasies of Mr. Hilary Vance as inexplicable as ever. But
she did not puzzle over the matter at all, for it was none of her
business; Mr. Vance was like that.

Having once begun, Hilary Vance fell into the way of confiding to her
from day to day his hopes and fears, the varying fortunes of his suit.
Some days the skies of his heaven were fair and serene; some days they
were livid with the darkest kind of cloud. Pollyooly, by dint of
hearing so much about it, began to get some understanding of the
matter, and consequently to take a greater interest in it. Always she
made an excellent listener. Her intercourse with the Honourable John
Ruffin had taught her that a comprehension of the matter under
discussion was by no means a necessary qualification of the excellent
listener; and Hilary Vance grew entirely satisfied with his confidante.

The affair was pursuing the usual course of his affairs of the heart:
one day he was well up in the seventh heaven, talking joyfully of an
early proposal and an immediate marriage; another he was well down in
the seventh hell. Pollyooly was always ready with the kind of
sympathy, chiefly facial, the changing occasion demanded.

Then one day her host had gone out to lunch with an editor and she was
taking hers with the Lump, when there came a rather hurried knocking at
the front door. She opened it, and to her surprise found Flossie
standing without. She was at once stricken with admiration of
Flossie's hat, which was very large and apparently loaded with the
contents of several beds of flowers. But Flossie herself looked to be
in a state of considerable perturbation.

"Is Mr. Vance in?" she said somewhat breathlessly.

She seemed to have been hurrying, and the hat was a little on one side.

Pollyooly eyed her with some disfavour, and said coldly: "No, he isn't."

"Will he be in soon?" said Flossie anxiously.

"I don't know," said Pollyooly yet more coldly.

Flossie gazed up and down the street with a helpless air; then she said:

"Then I'd better come In and write a note for him and leave it." And
she walked down the passage and into the studio.

Still wearing an air of disapproval, Pollyooly found paper and pencil
for