“Would you, truly?” Jean paused, and smiled back at her. “Then I shall be glad to come. And I will have a chance to tell you more about the ranch, and Mrs. Sandy, bless her.” She turned, and made a low curtsy before the two girls in the oil painting, before she hurried down the wide old hall to the dining-room.
Polly went on out into the front garden where Stoney waited for her. He was half asleep on the grass by the gates, but roused up, and trudged after her down the broad, shady street towards Glenwood. Polly could hardly wait to reach home, and tell the Admiral that she thought his “thoroughbred” was Jean Murray.
The dinner hour was always a ceremonial period, partly because Aunty Welcome insisted on adhering to tradition in this regard, partly because both Polly and the Admiral enjoyed this time most of all the day.
There were long, delicate sprays of flowering almond in tall, slender vases at each end of the dining table, the only bright spot of color in the quiet, high ceiled old room.
“Am I late, grandfather dear?” Polly asked contritely, pausing a moment at the open doors. There was no reply, so she crossed the hall to the study, and tapped gently.
“Come in, child, come in,” called the Admiral’s deep, cheery voice, and she obeyed. There was some one in the room besides the Admiral. At first she could not tell who it was, but when the person put out his hand, and said, “Now, Miss Polly, have you forgotten your ‘smuggler’ so soon?” all at once, Polly remembered.
“Oh, it’s Doctor Smith.”
It was indeed, the genial, merry doctor who had been the girls’ neighbor at Lost Island on their vacation trip of the previous year. As Polly laid her hand in his, she remembered all the fun of that summer, how the doctor had lived alone at “Smugglers’ Cove,” and the girls had discovered him, and thought him a pirate or a smuggler. How they had gone to the Orienta Club’s reception, and had found that their smuggler was no less a personage than Doctor Penrhyn Smith, the great naturalist from Washington, D. C.
“Grown a trifle taller, Admiral, that is the only change. Where are you to spend the summer this year, Commodore Polly?”
“Not as a Commodore,” Polly replied, shaking her head, and sitting down on the broad arm of the Admiral’s chair. “We haven’t really decided yet, but we want to do something different from last year.”