"Fan don't need me, and Sydney don't care whether I come or not, so I'll keep out of the way," she would say, as if to excuse her seeming indolence.
Polly was not at all like herself that winter, and those nearest to her saw and wondered at it most. Will got very anxious, she was so quiet, pale, and spiritless, and distracted poor Polly by his affectionate stupidity, till she completed his bewilderment by getting cross and scolding him. So he consoled himself with Maud, who, now being in her teens, assumed dignified airs, and ordered him about in a style that afforded him continued amusement and employment.
Western news continued vague, for Fan's general inquiries produced only provokingly unsatisfactory replies from Tom, who sang the praises of "the beautiful Miss Bailey," and professed to be consumed by a hopeless passion for somebody, in such half-comic, half-tragic terms, that the girls could not decide whether it was "all that boy's mischief," or only a cloak to hide the dreadful truth.
"We'll have it out of him, when he comes home in the spring," said Fanny to Polly, as they compared the letters of their brothers, and agreed that "men were the most uncommunicative and provoking animals under the sun." For Ned was so absorbed in business that he ignored the whole Bailey question, and left them in utter darkness.
Hunger of any sort is a hard thing to bear, especially when the sufferer has a youthful appetite, and Polly was kept on such a short allowance of happiness for six months, that she got quite thin and interesting; and often, when she saw how big her eyes were getting,
