Polly wished that Aunt Milly had come with them after all. Dearly as she loved her kind guardian and friend, she was still a little shy of him; a consciousness of girlish incompleteness, of undeveloped youth, haunted her perpetually. Polly was sufficiently quick-witted to feel her own deficiencies. How should she ever be able to satisfy him? she thought. Aunt Milly could talk so beautifully to him, and even Olive had brief spasms of eloquence. Polly felt sometimes as she listened to them as though she were craning her neck to look over a wall at some unknown territory with strange elevations and giddy depths, and wide bridgeless rivers meandering through it.
Suppositions, vague imaginations, oppressed her; Polly could talk sensibly in a grave matter-of-fact way, and at times she had a pretty piquante language of her own; but Chriss's erudition, and Olive's philosophy, and even Mildred's gentle sermonising, were wearying to her. 'I can talk about what I have seen and what I have heard and read,' she said once, 'but I cannot play at talk—make believe—as you grown-up children do. I think it is hard,' continued practical Polly, 'that Aunt Milly, who has seen nothing, and has been shut up in a sickroom all the best years of her life, can spin yards of talk where I cannot say a word.' But Dr. Heriot found no fault with his young companion; on the contrary, Polly's naïveté and freshness were infinitely refreshing to the weary man, who, as he told himself, had lived out the best years of his life. He looked at her now as she uttered her childish complaint. One little gloved hand rested on his arm, the other held up the long skirts daintily, under the broad-brimmed hat a pretty oval face dimpled and blushed with every word.
'If people would only not be so kind—if they would let me alone,' she grumbled.
'That is a singular grievance, Polly,' returned Dr. Heriot, smiling; 'happiness ought not to make us selfish.'
'That is what Aunt Milly says. Ah, how good she is!' sighed the girl, enviously; 'almost a saint. I wish I were more like her.'
'I am satisfied with Polly as she is, though she is no saint.'
'No, are you really?' looking up at him brightly. 'Do you know, I have been thinking a great deal since—you know when——' her colour giving emphasis to her unfinished sentence.
'Indeed? I should like to know some of those thoughts,' with a playful glance at her downcast face. 'I must positively hear them, Polly. How sweet and still it is this evening. Suppose we sit and rest ourselves for a little while, and you shall tell me all about them.'
Polly shook her head. 'They are not so easy to tell,' she said, looking very shy all at once. Dr. Heriot had placed her on a stile at the head of the little lane that skirted Podgill; the broad sunny meadow lay before them, gemmed with trefoil and Polly's favourite eyebright; blue gentian, and pink and white yarrow, and yellow ragwort, wove straggling colours in the tangled hedgerows; the graceful campanula, with its bell-like blossoms, gleamed here and there, towering above the lowlier rose-campion, while meadow-sweet and trails of honeysuckle scented the air.
Dr. Heriot leant against the fence with folded arms; his mood was sunny and benignant. In his gray suit and straw hat he looked young, almost handsome. Under the dark moustache his lip curled with an amused, undefinable smile.