“It is changed—oh! so changed!” Polly said, and there were tears in her eyes and in her voice. “Only a year ago we were all together, and things were bright enough then, even though poor daddy was just beginning to speak of trouble coming. Now he is dead, and poor Harold has gone, and Christina and Winnie are more lost to us than if they were dead, too. Yet we don’t want to leave the old home, Mr. Ambleton; indeed, we don’t.”
“But what will you do here? What life will you lead?” asked Valentine, reluctant to cede his point.
“I want to be busy, and that is my difficulty,” Polly confessed. “Sometimes I think I will start a school, and sometimes I wonder if we could make money with a boarding house. Oh!” the girl said, with a flash of her old self—“oh! I can see disapproval and doubt written in every line of your face. Your sister would be much more sympathetic. I wish you were more like your sister!”
“Do you find me unsympathetic?” Valentine asked, simply enough.
He was not conscious himself of the hurt tone in his voice.
Polly did not look at him as she said quite curtly:
“Very!” Then by way of mending things, she added: “You can’t help yourself, you know. It’s your nature. You are so big, and big people are never sympathetic.”
Val smiled faintly.
“According to you, Miss Polly, it’s rather a bad matter to be a big person. I remember once you informed me that big people were always conceited.”
Polly amended this.