“Better, I hope,” Mary said.
“Some of ’em wants one thing, some another, Miss. Let him know that you’re in earnest, whatever you do.”
“I am quite in earnest, Mrs. Merritt,” Mary told her; “and I think I have made that plain.”
“Did you tell him so, or write it, Miss?” Polly must ask. “Writing’s better—but it’s dull work.”
“I have done both, Polly. He doesn’t know where I am. I made it quite clear to him that he could not.”
Mrs. Merritt, having observed her guest, passed the back of her hand rapidly across her nose. “To be sure you could, Miss. It’s easy to be seen that God Almighty never gave you that pair of eyes for nothing. To call a man, or send him about his business—ah, I’ll warrant you.”
“Poor fellow,” mused the tender Polly. “I pity him.”
In private conversation afterwards Mrs. Merritt assured her daughter that she need not. We should have the young gentleman here before the swallows were away: let Polly mark her words. Our young lady was a snug young lady—that was a certainty. She was not a girl who would go without letters of a morning for long together. Letters! That sort live on ’em, as a man on his eleven o’clock beer. No, no. She was used to company, any one could see. She was meant to be somebody’s darling. How else did she get her pretty ways—and why to goodness wear her pretty frocks, but for that? Meantime, she had been used to the best, you could see; and she should have it here.
What Mrs. Merritt, however, did not know, and Polly did know, was that another gentleman stood in the background. Here lay the root of Polly’s passionate interest in her friend: a constant appeal to her imagination and judgment and wonder. A gentleman was to be expected; there was always a gentleman. But two gentlemen! One more gentleman, and Polly might have felt the responsibilities of Paris. In fact, she did feel them as things were.
Mary had come to Exeter, meaning no more than a passage-bird’s rest there—a night or two, and away. Her cottage at the Land’s End, solitary vigil face to face with the sea and the rocks, tending of the hidden garden there, a waiting and watching—and a great reward: that had been her fixed intent. Nothing seemed to be in the way. She was free as air: why should she wait?