David assumed a very wise look; then he said, “You can guess at such questions if you like, but I never do. Ask me something easier, Alexia.”
“Well, I think you are just dreadful!” cried Alexia in despair. “Oh, dear me, and to-morrow night you’ll all be miles and miles away, and me left here without Polly!”
The next morning she turned from the small station after the cars had borne away the little group bound for the steamer. “For I can’t ever bid her good-by again on the boat,” she had said to Pickering. “I tried that once in the old days you know, and it made me feel a great deal worse. Come, Mrs. Fargo,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Where are you going?” asked that lady, pausing with her foot on the step of the King carriage.
“Down to that old Mrs. Bascom’s,” said Alexia, trying to look pleasant, and hoping no one would look at her, for she was dreadfully afraid she should cry. “I must begin at once, or I never shall get there.”
“You go to-day, and I will try it to-morrow,” said Mrs. Fargo.
So Alexia jumped desperately into her little dog-cart, and drove furiously down to the cottage just around Primrose Lane, feeling with each revolution of the wheels how those other wheels were bearing Polly on and on, away from her.
“‘She’s gone; and I don’t never ’xpect to live to see her again, nor him, nor those pretty creeters,’ went on Grandma.”