"You remember?"
"It's a little confused in my mind--" he caught her look of
amazement, "just AT PRESENT," he stammered, feeling her wrath
again about to descend upon him.
"Well, I'm the twenty-four sheet stand," she explained.
"Sheet!" Mandy shrieked from her corner.
"Yes--the billboards--the pictures," Polly said, growing
impatient at their persistent stupidity.
"She sure am a funny talkin' thing!" mumbled Mandy to herself, as
she clipped the withered leaves from a plant near the window.
"You are dead sure they know I ain't comin' on?" Polly asked with
a lingering suspicion in her voice.
"Dead sure"; and Douglas smiled to himself as he lapsed into her
vernacular.
There was a moment's pause. Polly realised for the first time
that she must actually readjust herself to a new order of things.
Her eyes again roved about the room. It was a cheerful place in
which to be imprisoned--even Polly could not deny that. The
broad window at the back with its white and pink chintz curtains
on the inside, and its frame of ivy on the outside, spoke of
singing birds and sunshine all day long. Everything from the
white ceiling to the sweet-smelling matting that covered the
floor was spotlessly clean; the cane-bottomed rocker near the
curved window-seat with its pretty pillows told of days when a
convalescent might look in comfort at the garden beneath; the
counterpane, with its old-fashioned rose pattern, the little
white tidies on the back of each chair, and Mandy crooning beside
the window, all helped to make a homelike picture.
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