Polly was called from breakfast to greet David.
“We are not going to start as early as I expected,” he said, “not before nine. So I thought I would—just run up and say good-morning.” He smiled in almost his own cordial way.
The girl beamed up at him. She never harbored a pique, and now she began to chat as gayly as usual, in seeming forgetfulness of yesterday.
David, however, could not so lightly throw off the past. Recollections lingered to hamper his actions and retard his tongue. But he let his eyes rest upon Polly in gratification, laughing at her little pleasantries, and finally enjoying the present quite as if nothing in past or future could have any evil power for him. The parting was vastly different from that of the day before.
After he had gone Polly ran upstairs humming a song. How glad she was that he had come!
The days seemed long without David. Since they returned from college they had been much together, and now she missed him. The Randolphs were away, and Patricia and the rest could not quite fill the gap. The ladies of June Holiday Home always welcomed her with delight, and she called there occasionally; but their increased freedom of action carried them out-of-doors more than formerly, and she was apt not to find those at home whom she most wished to see. Then, too, the place had never seemed just the same since her beloved “Nita” had left it forever.
She was returning, one afternoon, from a shopping excursion with Leonora, when she was overtaken by Russell Ely. He drove up to the curb, and threw open the door of his car.
“Will you ride up the hill?” he asked.
In a moment she was whirling along the shady avenue, arranging her bundles comfortably in her lap and listening to her companion’s bright talk.
“This is a pleasant lift for me,” she said. “I have been round in the shops ever since luncheon, and I am tired.”