“Oh, and I’m so glad that you did, Miss Murray,” cried Polly. “Grandfather has gone up to the Capitol to meet Senator Yates this afternoon, and is going out home with him to Fair Oaks, so I am all alone. We’ll go out in the garden, and talk.”
“This is my first visit anywhere since I came east,” Jean remarked, as she laid aside her hat and coat, “so you can guess how much I enjoy it.”
“Why is it your first?” Polly had a natural gift for hitting the main point on the head.
“Because no one has asked me, I think.” Jean’s mouth was full of expression. It had a way of closing, and then smiling in the most knowing sort of way, Polly thought, as she watched it now. Somehow, it made her feel nonplussed, but she went ahead frankly.
“Maybe no one dared to. I know I never did. You always act—so—oh, I hardly know how to say it. As if you didn’t care really whether anybody liked you or not, as if you were so sure of yourself, and so well acquainted with yourself, don’t you understand, Miss Murray, that you did not need other people for company.”
“Ah, but I do need them, and very badly, too, sometimes,” protested Jean, slipping her arm around Polly’s waist, as they went down the broad, old-fashioned hall to the open doors at the back. “I have been more lonely since I came east than I dare to confess. You may be sure, though, I never wrote home that I was. We are Scotch, Polly, and you warm-hearted Southerners will never know all that that means. When anything is in your heart, it bubbles out like a spring, doesn’t it, sorrow or happiness? But when we are happiest or saddest, well, we just can’t say anything. It is all here, ’way down deep in our hearts, but we can’t seem to lift it out, and exhibit it. So you see, girlie, while I may have seemed independent and self-sufficient all winter long, I was really eating my heart out for very lonesomeness. Can you understand?”
Polly nodded sympathetically. She always could understand the other person’s point of view.
“That is why the girls never became really acquainted with you, then. I tried to. You see, I always liked you, Miss Murray, and when I like anybody without trying to like them—when it just happens all by itself, I know it will last.”
Jean leaned back her head, and laughed merrily.
“Polly, you are a joy. You think aloud, don’t you? And what a dear, quaint old garden. I love these winding paths, and arbors, but how oddly some of the flowers have come up, how unexpectedly, I mean.” She stopped before a clump of tall flag lilies, unfolding purple and golden banners to the soft air.