The girl took her mother’s hand, touching it lightly with her lips. “Please don’t tell Mr. Hunt what my family think of my obstinacy,” she pleaded. “Because if you do, he will either have no respect for me or else will have too much for himself because I gave in to him,” she said saucily.
Yet it was probably ten minutes after Mr. Hunt’s departure before it occurred to Mrs. Wharton to be surprised over Polly’s unexpected surrender to a comparative stranger, when she had refused to be influenced by any member of her own family.
But now the question of chief importance was where should Polly go for her much needed rest? It was her own decision finally that rather than any other place in the world she preferred to return to Woodford to spend the summer months in the old cabin near Sunrise Hill.
CHAPTER XIX—Illusions Swept Away
It was a golden July afternoon two months later when all nature was a splendid riot of color and perfume. In a hammock under a group of pine trees a girl lay half asleep. Now and then she would open her eyes to glance at the lazy white clouds overhead. Then she would look with perhaps closer attention at the figure of another girl who was seated a few yards away.
If the girl in the hammock was dreaming, her companion fitted oddly into her dream. She was dressed in a simple white muslin frock and her hair had a band of soft blue ribbon tied about it. In her lap lay an open book, but no page had been turned in the last fifteen minutes and indeed she was quieter than her friend who was supposed to be asleep.
“Betty,” a voice called softly, “bring your chair nearer to me. I have done my duty nobly for the past two hours and have not spoken a single, solitary word. So even the sternest of doctors and nurses can’t say I am unfaithful to my rest cure. Besides it is absurd, now when I am as well as any one else. Yes, that is much better, Betty, and you are, please, to gaze directly into my face while I am talking to you. I haven’t liked your fashion lately of staring off into space, as you were doing just recently and indeed on all occasions when you believe no one is paying any special attention to you.”
With a low curtsey Betty did as she was commanded. She even knelt down on the ground beside the hammock to look the more directly into the eyes of her friend. But as she continued, unexpectedly a slow color crept into her cheeks from her throat upwards until it had flushed her entire face.
“I declare, Polly,” she exclaimed jumping to her feet abruptly and sitting down in her chair again, “you make me feel as though I had committed some offence, though I do assure you I have been as good as gold, so far as I know, for a long, long time.”
Polly was silent a moment. “You know perfectly well, Betty, that I don’t think you have done anything wrong. You need not use that excuse to try and deceive me, dear, because it does not make the slightest impression. The truth is, Betty, that you have a secret that you are keeping from me and from every one else so far as I know. Of course there isn’t any reason why you should confide in me if you don’t wish. You may be punishing me for my lack of confidence in you last winter.”