over, that the only danger now was the splitting of Ronald, and that he thought that that, too, was past.
Pollyooly had settled down quietly to the even tenor of her life. She often thought of Ronald; she sometimes longed to be in the green coolness of the Ricksborough woods with the Lump. Then one afternoon she had just taken his tea to the Honorable John Ruffin and retired to the Lump in their attic, when there came a knocking on the door of the chambers. She went down and opened it; and there, on the landing, stood a dazzling vision—a lady in a confection of scarlet and yellow, in which only a beauty that was as dark and as brilliant as hers could dare to deck itself. So fine, however, was her coloring, so dark her eyes and hair, that even those primary colors seemed hardly to give them their full value.
She smiled with pleasure at the sight of Pollyooly's angel face, in its frame of red hair, and said in a delightful, eager voice:
"You're the little girl Mr. Hilary Vance, the painter, calls 'Pollyooly, the Queen of the Slum Fairies?' You sat to him for the pictures of those fairy stories in the Blue Magazine, didn't you?"
