CRULLERS’ PAROLE
“Oh, grandfather, dear—” exclaimed Polly, holding up a slice temptingly on a plate, “Shortcake?”
“No, Polly, don’t coax me. Not a bite to eat. I’ve just been riding along the river. And girls, that reminds me.” The Admiral sank into one of the deep-seated garden chairs, and held up his finger at them all mysteriously. “I have seen her again.”
“The same girl?” asked Polly eagerly, bending forward and even forgetting the shortcake.
“The same one. I never saw a girl ride so splendidly in all my life. She is the admiration of every one along the river road. I heard Senator Yates telling somebody about her at dinner last evening, and bless my heart, she isn’t any larger than Isabel here. Yet, she must be older, but she does not appear so mounted. I can always rely on meeting her Friday afternoons about this hour. Never have I seen her on the street, mind—but ride! Polly, if you could sit a horse like that, and take the road as she does, I’d—why, I don’t know what I would do as a reward of merit.”
Polly leaned back, puzzled, and thinking hard.
“I don’t see who it can be, girls. Grandfather says he sees her every Friday afternoon, and has for weeks this spring, and I don’t know her at all. Maybe it is a guest at one of the houses outside of Queen’s Ferry.”
“Maybe it’s the ghost of the Lady Kathleen,” Ruth suggested gravely. “Don’t you remember her?
“Along the dark highway, at night there is seen,
The ghost of a horse and its rider, Kathleen.