Polly of Lady Gay Cottage Part 30

An automobile had gone to the nearest station, ten miles away, to meet the evening train and fetch back some new boarders--so much the children knew; but as this was not an unusual occurrence they only wondered mildly if there would be any boys or girls among the coming guests. They had finished their last game of tennis, and were lounging on the piazza steps, when the hotel car was sighted up the dusty road.

"We'd better scoot," advised Carl Webster, "or some of the new folks may agree with old Mrs. Chatterton, that they 'never did see such a raft o' young ones!'"

The imitation of the fidgety little woman's voice and manner was so complete that the others broke into laughter; but n.o.body moved.

The car was slowing up, and Polly, turning carelessly to look, gave a little cry of astonishment. Then, to the surprise of the rest, she darted down the steps.

"Ilga!--Miss Price!"--her words stopped short, for Ilga was on her feet--was stepping forward! Her face matched her joyful greeting.

In a minute Patricia was there, asking excited questions and begging the invalid to be careful.

"As if I were not crawling!" laughed Ilga. "Oh, it does seem so splendid to walk! I've got lots of messages for you, Polly. Your father came to the station to see me off--just think of that! Wasn't it lovely of him? And your mother made me a long call yesterday! I wouldn't let anybody tell you a thing about my coming--I wanted to surprise you! You were surprised, weren't you?" she queried anxiously.

"I'm so surprised I can't think," laughed Polly. "Did you know it when I came away--that you were coming, too?"

"We'd just spoken of it, hadn't we, Miss Price? It wasn't a bit sure then. I was wild to come--just wild!" Ilga dropped into the easy chair placed for her, and drew a long, happy breath.

"Aren't you awfully tired?" questioned Patricia.

"Oh, I guess not!--I don't know. I only know I'm here and it's beautiful! Father and mother are coming next week; won't that be grand?"

So the pleasant talk went on, until Miss Price carried her patient away to supper and rest.

Merry days followed. Polly, remembering the old Ilga and her few school friends, looked delightedly upon the popularity which this subdued, humbled girl was winning. Once such attention might have incited her to overbearing conduct; now it seemed only to make her fairly beam with good-fellowship and happiness. "And she actually loves father!" Polly would smilingly tell herself, secretly rejoicing in the fact; but she rarely spoke of the change even to Patricia. It was enough that the miracle had been wrought. It did not need to be pa.s.sed about in words.

Although somewhat against his father's wishes, Harold remained for the week which he had started to spend in Fair Harbor; but all his pleading could not make the grudging consent cover a longer time.

With tears in his eyes he bade Polly good-bye.

"If you were only going, too!" he whispered. "Come on, Polly--do!"

"Why, you know I can't!" she returned, half laughingly, half sadly.

He muttered an exulting reply that she could not quite catch, and then the train came, and he was hustled away, leaving Polly to wonder what he had said.

"It was something about what he was going to do when he was grown up,"

she mused. "I don't see why he should talk of that now--and here!"

On her return to the hotel, she ran over to the croquet ground that skirted the opposite side of the road. A game was in progress, and for the time Harold faded into the past. Patricia being called to the house, Polly took her place, and she was driving a ball to the last stake when somebody cried out:--

"There's your cousin! What's he coming back for?"

Polly glanced up, to see Harold grinning and waving to her jubilantly.

He jumped from the car as it slowed, and came to meet her.

"How did you get here? I s'posed you were on the way to New York!"

"Had an accident," he answered cheerfully,--"just below the station, and the track was so blocked up they said we couldn't get along in hours. I wasn't going to stay fooling round there, you bet! I said, wasn't there an auto somewhere that could bring us back to the hotel, and a man asked me what hotel 'twas and all about it up here, and he and another man said they'd get an auto if there was one to be had. So they did--and here I am!"

He wagged his head gleefully.

"I never saw such a boy for pouncing in on people!" laughed Ilga. "But I'm awfully glad you've come. Was there anybody hurt?"

"Yes, some of 'em. No one killed, they said. 'Twas a mighty big smash-up, though! My! you'd 'a' thought the whole world was going to pieces when we came together! And we hadn't been started much more'n two minutes! Our car tilted over, and I climbed out through the window! I didn't even get a scratch."

"Don't let's talk about it," begged Polly. "I'm so glad you aren't hurt."

"Yes," agreed Harold; "but I'd 'a' come back here all the same if I had been, and then pop would 'a' had to let me stay."

The children laughed, all but Polly. She said, with a little pucker of the brows:--

"What a boy!"

Later, as they went up to the hotel, she glanced towards the broad piazza, now dotted with men and women, and her eyes widened in amazement.

"Why, there's Mr. Morrow!"

"Who's he?" queried Harold indifferently.

"Chris Morrow's father--don't you know? The one that gave me the pansy pin."

"Oh! Where is he?"

"Over there by the post, right next to the girl in light pink."

"That's the man I came up with! But his name isn't Morrow--it's Winship. He said so."

"Well, it looks just like him anyway," insisted Polly. "Perhaps it isn't," she added disappointedly.

Before they reached the piazza steps, the stranger arose and went inside.

"It doesn't walk like Mr. Morrow," admitted Polly. "But I wish he'd stayed, I wanted to see him nearer."

For several days, however, no opportunity came for observing the man at close range. In the big dining-hall, even if he chanced to be there at the same time, he sat the entire length of the room away from her, and they did not meet elsewhere. Then, one morning, at a turn of the long piazza, they chanced to come face to face, and Polly, struck by his remarkable resemblance to the father of her friend, could not forbear to speak.

"I beg your pardon," she began, half afraid now that she had actually started, "but aren't you Mr. Morrow,--the one I used to see at the hospital in Fair Harbor?"

A puzzled look swept the man's face. Then he smiled.

"I think you are mistaken, little lady. My name is Winship, Bradford Winship of New York."

"You look almost exactly like him," returned Polly, even now refusing to be quite convinced, although there was not a trace of recognition in the smiling face she was scanning.

"I seem to have two or three doubles around the country," he remarked.

"I am continually being taken for somebody or other. Sorry not to have had the previous pleasure of your acquaintance, but I hope that we may follow up the little we have made."

He left her with a deferential bow, and she ran to tell Patricia and Ilga of her blunder. How Harold would have laughed! But he had left for home as soon as it had been ascertained that the trains were running on time.