"I am glad you have young people with you," she said. "We need them more and more as we grow older."
"Well, that depends," the Colonel demurred, too loyal to his Pollys, even here and now, to allow them to be regarded generically. "There are not many girls I should want to have on my hands. I think the Pollys are rather exceptional."
"What did you say the name was?"
"Polly—Polly Beverly."
"And what is the other one's name?"
"Same name. They are both Pollys. I named them myself," he added, with a quite unforeseen revival of that agreeable self-satisfaction which he never could conceal in this connection.
And then, to his own surprise, he found himself entering with much gusto upon the story of their christening. By the time he had finished, he felt quite toned up and invigorated.
"Tell me some more about them," she begged.
She was leaning back in her seat, serenely receptive. The Colonel, sitting opposite to her in the straight-backed chair such as he always chose, noted, with a curiously disengaged pleasure, the wonderful opaline quality of the impression she made. The soft grey folds of her dress, the still more softened grey of the hair, and the deep grey of the beautiful eyes,—none of these quiet shades was dull and fixed. A delicate play of light and shadow made them vital, as the grey of the lagoons is vital, when there are clouds before the sun, and a strange, mystic luminousness traverses their tranquil spaces. She had always reminded him of the lagoons. The association only seemed to make each more exquisite and apart. And now, as he told her about his Pollys, it was with very much the same sense of perfect gratification with which he had taken them out upon the water the day before. There was also the same singular absence of the old, familiar pain and oppression.
"What are they interested in?" she asked, and there could be no doubt in the Colonel's mind that she really cared to know.