"And you, Pauline?" queried the old man.
"Yes, father," for she loved him and felt toward him as if she were indeed his daughter. "Perhaps some time I'll marry Harry, but not for a year or two. I couldn't marry him now, it wouldn't be right."
"Wouldn't be right?? Well, I'd like to know why not."
Pauline was silent a moment. She hated to oppose this fine old man, but her will was as firm as his, and well he knew it. Harry spoke for her:
"Oh, she wants to see life before she settles down—wild life, sin and iniquity, battle, murder and sudden death and all that sort of stuff. I don't know what has gotten into women these days, anyway."
Then Polly, prettily, daintily, as she did all things, and with charming little blushes and hesitations, confessed her secret. In short, it was her ambition to be a writer, a writer of something worth while—a great writer. To be a great writer one must know life, and to know life one must see it—see the world. She ended by asking the two men if this were not so.
They looked at each other and coughed with evident relief it the comparative harmlessness of her whim.
"Yes, Polly," said old man Marvin, "a great writer ought to see life in order to know what he is writing about. But what makes you suspect that you have the ability to be even an ordinary writer?"
Marvin sire winked at Marvin son and Marvin son winked back, for no man is too old or too young to enjoy teasing a pretty and serious girl.
Pauline saw the wink, and her foot ceased tracing a pattern in the carpet and stamped on it instead.