Until then painting lamp shades at night, writing wretched verse for some wretched publication, doing a child’s song cycle for almost the cost of the music paper, harmonizing impossible marching songs, substituting at a Harlem movie house as the piano player—none of these was too mean for Polly to do since they sustained her until the day the great theme should whisper itself!
“The thing which keeps Polly afloat,” Ernestine had declared, “is that she is glad for every one else who wins out—it has made her so sunny hearted she just can’t go under.”
Polly approached Thurley with open arms, saying in her crisp fashion, “Bliss tells me you have never known father, mother nor telephone number and we can baby you all we like,” bending down unexpectedly to kiss her.
Before Thurley answered, Polly whirled around to demand, “Listen, every one, I’ve come to the conclusion we should all be thankful for anything that makes cold chills go up and down our spines,” dashing into some nonsensical adventure told in her own fashion.
Hobart waited until the conclusion, after which he offered Thurley his arm and led the way into the dining room which proved to be an enclosed sort of terrace with wonderfully imitated flowering shrubs, green striped awnings, a lily pool fountain giving a touch of the unreal and illusive. Wicker chairs, artificial ascension lilies and Canterbury bells were in profusion. The room was called the “village green,” Caleb whispered to Thurley, and on nights when the thermometer skidded below zero, Hobart delighted to come into this exquisite little oasis of almost tropical heat and make his guests forget the sleet and frost without. Two chairs were tipped against their well appointed places, one for Mark Wirth, the dancer, and one for Sam Sparling, the actor, Thurley learned, a family custom always observed.
As they sat about the table, Thurley between Polly and Collin, Polly remarked naïvely:
“I’m trying to get Collin to tell me why women who dabble in water colors always paint ‘Pharaoh’s Horses’ with chests like inflated, tuppenny balloons?”
“How can a mere painter of fried egg sunsets answer?” he retorted. “Oh, I say, about Daphne’s wedding present—Polly doesn’t want to send it.”