Yet the end of the pleasant all-day’s journey found Polly looking forward to her promised month with a vague uneasiness. She half wished she had confided in her mother and had let her decide. While listening to Patricia’s happy chatter, she wondered whether she had done right in coming, arguing the question back and forth; still so secretly did she carry on her own line of thought that merry Patricia never guessed she was not holding Polly’s entire attention.
In the morning things looked different. The charming little village of Midvale Springs, dropped so cozily among the Vermont hills, won Polly’s heart at first daylight glance. If father and mother were there, too! But even with the knowledge that they were hundreds of miles away the early days of her visit were spent very happily. There was so much to see, new faces at every turn, merry playmates at all hours, straw rides and barn frolics, beautiful drives alongside tumbling brooks and through deep mountain gorges,—Polly’s letters home told of these unfamiliar scenes and pleasures. Mrs. Dudley said to herself that the homesickness must have passed with the journey.
Polly had been at the Springs but a week when she was one of a party to spend the day at Lazy Lake, twenty miles distant. On her return, in the early twilight, a small figure popped out of the dusk to give her a frantic embrace.
“Harold!” she exclaimed, recovering wits and breath together. “Where did you come from?”
“Fair Harbor,” promptly answered the unabashed boy. “Couldn’t find anybody home at your house, and that feller next door—what’s his name?—”
“David Collins?”
“Yes, David—he said you were up here, so I came right along.”
At first it was a problem to know how to dispose of the rash little lad; but by dint of certain shifts a room in the hotel was finally provided for him, and he fitted very happily into the gay life there.
The next week another surprise came to Polly, and it was even greater than the advent of Harold.
An automobile had gone to the nearest station, ten miles away, to meet the evening train and fetch back some new boarders—so much the children knew; but as this was not an unusual occurrence they only wondered mildly if there would be any boys or girls among the coming guests. They had finished their last game of tennis, and were lounging on the piazza steps, when the hotel car was sighted up the dusty road.