"Thank you; but I won't, so don't trouble your kind heart about me; I'm all right," said Polly, stoutly.
But when they drew up before the lighted house, and she found herself in the midst of the pleasant stir of festivity, the coming and going of carriages, the glimpses of bright colors, forms, and faces, the bursts of music, and a general atmosphere of gayety, Polly felt that she wasn't all right, and as she drove away for a dull evening in her lonely little room, she just cried as heartily as any child denied a stick of candy.
"It's dreadful wicked of me, but I can't help it," she sobbed to herself, in the corner of the carriage. That music sets me all in a twitter, and I should have looked nice in Fan's blue tarlatan, and I know I could behave as well as any one, and have lots of partners, though I'm not in that set. Oh, just one good gallop with Mr. Sydney or Tom! No, Tom wouldn't ask me there, and I wouldn't accept if he did. Oh, me! oh, me! I wish I was as old and homely, and good and happy, as Miss Mills!"
So Polly made her moan, and by the time she got home, was just in the mood to go to bed and cry herself to sleep, as girls have a way of doing when their small afflictions become unbearable.
But Polly didn't get a chance to be miserable very long, for as she went up stairs feeling like the most injured girl in the world, she caught a glimpse of Miss Mills, sewing away with such a bright face that she couldn't resist stopping for a word or two.
"Sit down, my dear, I'm glad to see you, but ex-
