Her lips drooped sorrowfully. “I can’t! truly I can’t!” she answered, just as she had answered his brother, in Fair Harbor.
Then they went past the cage of the very funniest monkeys of all, and Harold did not even smile.
The day before the one set for Polly’s going home she was given a grand party by her cousins, and Uncle Maurice ordered the affair with a free hand. She had never seen a house so converted into a garden of flowers. Wandering about from room to room, she and Harold watched the men as they placed potted plants, twined garlands, banked windows and fireplaces with vines and blossoms, and arranged pretty nooks of greenery and color. Finally they sat down in a little make-believe arbor of roses, Polly busily admiring everything.
Harold was more quiet; he was even grave. At last his thoughts became words.
“Oh, Polly, stay with me! do! I want you!”
“Why, Harold, you know I told you I couldn’t!” she answered, almost reprovingly.
“I know you say so,” he retorted; “but you can! You can as well as not! You just don’t want to—that’s why! But I think you might, to please me! Do, Polly!”
She plucked a bit of green from her cousin’s coat sleeve before she replied.
“I don’t see how I could leave father and mother,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t want to give up your home here and your father and brothers to go and live with me.”