"Now what do
you think I am? A real lady, I'll bet!" She caught a whisper about
her hair. Red, indeed! Didn't they wish they had anything like it!
Polly could have told them that at a ball she graced with her
presence not long ago her hair was done up with no less than
seventy-two pins. Think of that! Seventy-two pins!
She munched a cream tart, and turned her back upon the envious pair.
Back to Kennington Road by omnibus, riding outside, her eyes and
hair doing execution upon a young man in a very high collar, who
was, she saw, terribly tempted to address her, but, happily for
himself, could not pluck up courage. Polly liked to be addressed by
strange young men; experience had made her so skilful in austere
rebuke.
She rested in her bedroom, as stuffy and disorderly a room as could
have been found in all Kennington Road. Moggie, the general, was
only allowed to enter it in the occupant's presence, otherwise who
knew what prying and filching might go on? She paid a very low rent,
thanks to Mrs. Bubb's good nature, but the strained relations
between them made it possible that she would have to leave, and she
had been thinking to-day that she could very well afford a room in a
better neighbourhood; not that, all things considered, she desired
to quit this house, but Mrs.
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