“Oh!” There was the sound of desperate scraping against the farther side of the fence, and Polly’s countenance became fairly convulsed with the effort of holding herself in sight. “Oh! She said it was pur-pur—”
Polly disappeared. There was a thud from the next yard.
“Purple!” The word floated across to him, muffled but triumphant.
“Are you hurt, Polly?” he called anxiously.
“Not a bit,” was the rueful response, “but I’m afraid the day-lilies are!” Then she laughed merrily. “Thanks, Nod! I didn’t think Nettie was right. She loves purple, you see!”
“Does she? Well, say, maybe she can be Williams. We weren’t going to have Williams, but its color is purple, I think, and if she is going to be disappointed—”
“She will look very well indeed in brown,” came from the other side in judicial tones; “and if we begin making changes, half the girls will want to be something they aren’t. Why, Pearl Fayles begged to be some girls’ college neither Mae nor I had ever heard of, just so she could wear lavender and pale lemon!”
“Well, all right,” laughed Laurie. “She’d better stick to Brown—and brown! Good-by, Polly. I’ll drop in after a while and find out how things are getting on.”
He turned to find Bob viewing him quizzically from the end of the arbor, swinging a hammer in each hand. “Of course it’s all right, I dare say,” he announced, “but I thought you came here to fix up the arbor. Instead of that I find you talking to girls over the fence!”
“There’s only one girl,” replied Laurie, with dignity, “and we were talking business.”