Outside, Dick was holding high revel as every one revolved around him, the hero of the coasting accident, till the boy ran considerable danger from all the attention he was receiving. But one glance and a smile from Mrs. Whitney brought him back to himself.
"Don't talk any more about it," he cried a trifle impatiently. "I was a muff to stick on, when I knew we were going over. Mamma, won't you stop them?"
And she did.
"Do you know, Dicky and I have a secret to tell all of you good people." The color flew into her soft cheek, and her eyes beamed.
"Really, Marian," said her father, whose hand had scarcely ceased patting Dick's brown head since the boy's home-coming, "you've grown young in Badgertown. I never saw you look so well as you do to-day."
Mrs. Whitney laughed and tossed him a gay little smile, that carried him back to the days when Marian King stood before him looking just so.
"Now listen, father, and all you good people, to my secret—Dicky's and mine; we are allowed to tell it now. Papa Whitney sailed in the Servia, and he ought to be in to-day!"
A shout of joy greeted her announcement. Polly, off in her prison, could hear the merry sounds, and her happy heart echoed them. The misery of the past week, when she had been bearing an unatoned fault, seemed to drop away from her as she listened, and to say, "Life holds sunshine yet."
Then a hush dropped upon the gay uproar. She did not know that Dicky was proclaiming "Yes, and he is never, never going back again. That is, unless he takes mamma and me, you know."
Mrs. Chatterton turned suddenly upon the young figure.