“Can't he? Why, I thought he was very pleasant and kind!” and Polly opened her eyes with a surprised expression.
“He's an awful boy, my dear; and if you have anything to do with him, he'll torment you to death. Boys are all horrid; but he's the horridest one I ever saw.”
Fanny went to a fashionable school, where the young ladies were so busy with their French, German, and Italian, that there was no time for good English. Feeling her confidence much shaken in the youth, Polly privately resolved to let him alone, and changed the conversation, by saying, as she looked admiringly about the large, handsome room, “How splendid it is! I never slept in a bed with curtains before, or had such a fine toilet-table as this.”
“I'm glad you like it; but don't, for mercy sake, say such things before the other girls!” replied Fanny, wishing Polly would wear ear-rings, as every one else did.
“Why not?” asked the country mouse of the city mouse, wondering what harm there was in liking other people's pretty things, and saying so. “Oh, they laugh at everything the least bit odd, and that is n't pleasant.” Fanny did n't say “countrified,” but she meant it, and Polly felt uncomfortable. So she shook out her little black silk apron with a thoughtful face, and resolved not to allude to her own home, if she could help it.
“I'm so poorly, mamma says I need n't go to school regularly, while you are here, only two or three times a week, just to keep up my music and French. You can go too, if you like; papa said so. Do, it's such fun!” cried Fanny, quite surprising her friend by this unexpected fondness for school.
“I should be afraid, if all the girls dress as finely as you do, and know as much,” said Polly, beginning to feel shy at the thought.
“La, child! you need n't mind that. I'll take care of you, and fix you up, so you won't look odd.”
“Am I odd?” asked Polly, struck by the word and hoping it did n't mean anything very bad.
“You are a dear, and ever so much prettier than you were last summer, only you've been brought up differently from us; so your ways ain't like ours, you see,” began Fanny, finding it rather hard to explain.
“How different?” asked Polly again, for she liked to understand things.