When Polly Was Eighteen

WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN
BY EMMA C. DOWD
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY EMMA C. DOWD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO MY FRIEND JULIA DARLING PECK IN HAPPY MEMORY OF SHELBURNE SUMMERS
WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN
WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN
. . .
POLLY leaned back against the great oak, her eyes bent on David’s face. She wondered—and wondered hard. If she could only fathom that inscrutable expression!
The young man, stretched on the grass among the waving shadows, was gazing across the valley to the hills in their soft afternoon veiling. It was a June picture beautiful enough to hold the attention of any one, yet it was plain that David’s thoughts were not on the landscape.
They had come out for a walk, which had led them miles to the south and finally to the top of Chimney Hill, where they had stopped to rest.
At the start David had been talkative enough, in fact unusually merry; then, from no discernible cause, his lips had shut gravely and Polly had not been able to draw out more than monosyllables and short, matter-of-fact sentences. As she watched the unreadable face she tried to guess what the trouble might be. As in the old days before college, her lover had his occasional jealous moods, and although they were less frequent they grew more and more bitter. Still, during the happy intervals Polly would coax herself to believe that they were past forever. Now she thought over the route, bit by bit, trying to find something which could have disturbed him. At last, baffled in her endeavors, she ventured suddenly:—