"It seems like I hadn't seen you for a century, although now that I do see you, you look as natural as life, and not a bit as if you were weighed down by the care of a hundred girls, such as I hear you have taken under your wing."
"Not a quarter nor an eighth of a hundred; but where in the world have you dropped from, Polly Porson? Have you come North, as you used to threaten, to buy a trousseau, or is your novel ready to offer to a publisher?"
At which confusing double question the usually nonchalant Polly blushed so exceedingly that Julia knew which part of the question had been answered.
"Who is he?" she asked so pointedly, that Polly, nothing loath, sat down to tell the story. She had sprained her ankle, it seemed, early in the autumn. "Why, I am sure I wrote you about it," she added, when Julia expressed her surprise, "and I'm sure that I told you about the doctor; didn't I say a great deal about him?"
"Well, perhaps you did, but I was so unsuspicious that I did not attach much importance to what you said, or I thought what you wrote was in mere appreciation for his skill. Besides, I begin to remember that you told me that he was a cousin, and one whom you especially disliked, though you believed that he had saved you from being permanently lame."
"Well, he is a cousin, as cousins go in the South, several degrees removed; and he was perfectly disagreeable at first because I had gone to College; but I've brought him round, so that he has made his own younger sister begin her preparation for Radcliffe."
"So in gratitude to him you are going to give up all your plans for independence and fame. Alas, poor Polly!"
"Oh, no, indeed; he says that I may write novels or do anything I like. You never saw such a changed man. I just wish that you had known him a year ago, so that you could mark the improvement."
Thus Polly rattled on, and yet, as in their College days, there was an undercurrent of wisdom in all that she said.
"To tell the truth," she explained, "one thing I came for was to see just how your experiment is working, for I have an idea that I shall be able to do something of the same kind in Atlanta—in a very small way," she added hastily, "not at all in this magnificent style; but it's very much needed, and I have some original ideas to combine with yours."