Whereupon Mufty, finding himself dropped upon the coldly unsympathetic ingrain carpet, desisted from further encouraging remarks.
Polly was a schoolgirl still, though she was nearing the dignity of graduation. She had no special taste for study, but she cherished the Yankee reverence for education, and although it was not quite clear to her how Latin declensions and algebraic symbols were to help her in after-life, she committed them to memory with a very good grace, and enjoyed all the satisfaction of work for work’s sake.
It happened, therefore, that the pursuit of learning interfered for several hours with the far more important object which she had at heart to-day; and it was not until two o’clock that she found herself at liberty to do what every nerve and fibre of her young organism was straining to accomplish.
“Mufty hastily established himself across her shoulder.”
“I’m not going right home,” she said to Dan; “I’ve got an errand to do.”
“Polly’s got an idea,” Dan said to himself, struck with the eagerness in her face, and the haste with which she walked away. “What a girl she is for ideas, any way!” and he trudged along the snowy road with the other boys, getting rather out of breath in the effort to keep up with them.
Polly, meanwhile, stepped swiftly on her way. She was thinking of Dan. He at least was a natural student and had always led his class. She was not only fond of Dan, but proud of him, too. He was a handsome boy, with those clear, dark eyes of his in which a less partial observer than Polly might have read the promise of fine things. 144