CHAPTER XIV.
NIPPED IN THE BUD.
ON the evening of Fan's visit, Polly sat down before her fire with a resolute and thoughtful aspect. She pulled her hair down, turned her skirt back, put her feet on the fender, and took Puttel into her lap, all of which arrangements signified that something very important had got to be thought over and settled. Polly did not soliloquize aloud, as heroines on the stage and in books have a way of doing, but the conversation she held with herself was very much like this,—
"I'm afraid there is something in it. I've tried to think it's nothing but vanity or imagination, yet I can't help seeing a difference, and feeling as if I ought not to pretend that I don't. I know it's considered proper for girls to shut their eyes and let things come to a crisis, no matter how much mischief is done. But I don't think it's doing as we'd be done by, and it seems a great deal more honest to show a man that you don't love him, before he has entirely lost his heart. The girls laughed at me when I said so, and they declared that it would be a very improper thing to do; but I've observed that they don't hesitate to snub 'ineligible parties,' as they call poor,
