“You foolish boy! As if I wouldn’t! What possible reason could I have for not wishing you to come?”
Russell grew grave. He turned and looked squarely into Polly’s eyes, looked until the brown eyes wondered—half understood—and fell away from the passionate gaze.
“Don’t be silly!” she said.
Then all the man in him burst forth.
“Is it silly to love you, Polly Dudley? to wish to be with you? to covet the right to give you everything that can add to your pleasure and happiness? to long to hold you in my arms and to call you my wife? Is that silliness? If it is, I plead guilty.”
Polly did not look up. The red burned in her cheeks and crept up under the little curls that fell over her forehead.
“I suppose I am a fool,” Russell went on. “First, to come up here at all, and then to blurt out like this, when I had made up my mind to wait. But, of course, you’ve seen all along how it was, ever since—why, ever since the first day I saw you at high school, away back when we were kids. But David Collins was always in my way. How I longed to knock him aside! You have seen it all—haven’t you, Polly?”
A tiny shake of the drooping head.
“I don’t understand how you could help seeing—only you were never the girl to imagine every fellow in love with you that happened to wish you good-morning.”
There was a moment’s silence. Presently he asked, “Haven’t you a single word for me, Polly?”