On Thursday Polly was thrown into a pleasant excitement by the telephone message that came to Dr. Dudley. Uncle Maurice Westwood was in New York, and would motor up to Fair Harbor the next morning, to see his son and his new niece.
“I shall have to stay home from school, shan’t I?” Polly questioned eagerly.
“I think not,” was the quiet answer. “It is uncertain what time he will come, so things had better go on as usual.”
“But what if he should go back before I got home?” worried Polly.
Mrs. Dudley laughed. “No danger of that! Don’t you think your uncle will be as anxious to see you as you are to see him?”
“Maybe,” she replied doubtfully.
She felt that so unusual an occasion called for her best dress and a stately waiting for the visitor, instead of going to school in her common frock just as on ordinary days when nothing happened. But she made no further objection, joining David on the front walk, and telling him that “Uncle Maurice” was actually coming.
Returning at noon, Polly ran nearly all the way, so eager was she to see if her uncle’s car were in front of the house. To her disappointment the only vehicle in sight was a grocer’s team at Colonel Gresham’s side gate.
“I’m afraid he’s gone,” she lamented under her breath; yet she hurried round to the kitchen door, and was relieved of her fear by hearing voices in the living-room, her mother’s and a deeper one that she did not know.