GLENWOOD

The music-room was on the east side of the hall at its farthest end. As Polly hurried along the hall, she caught sight of a woe-begone figure, and stopped short. The Admiral was waiting for her just beyond the arched entrance to the reception room. From where she stood, she could just see his shoulder, and some iron gray curls which shook a little, so she knew he must be laughing. The Admiral’s curls were always a weathervane of his mood. Polly hesitated, then following her first impulse, she slipped into the library, and put her hand on Crullers’ shoulder. Such an unhappy, moist Crullers, though, very different from the happy-go-lucky, easy-going girl of the past term. She raised a tearful face, and sobbed outright.

“I’m not going back home.”

“You’re not!” Polly checked herself. She was not much given to expostulations. The shortest way around any trouble was straight through the middle, she always held. “Why aren’t you?”

“The children are down with measles, so I’ll have to stay here for weeks, and it spoils my vacation.”

Polly considered. It was not a very joyous outlook. During the long summer vacation, the big gray house was shrouded in darkness, and Miss Calvert usually went to the seashore for a rest.

“Maybe Honoria would take you with her when she goes away,” Polly suggested, but Crullers shook her head dismally.

“No, she won’t. She says she doesn’t want any such responsibility as I would be. I am to be left here with Annie May and Fraulein.”

Polly frowned at such an outlook. Annie May was not so bad. The big-hearted old colored mammy who acted as cook at the Hall was far preferable as a pleasant companion to Fraulein, the teacher of German, with her neuralgia and shaded eyeglasses. Polly had always said that she believed those glasses were the whole reason why Fraulein took such a dismal view of life. Green glasses were enough to turn Harlequin into an undertaker.

“Don’t you mind, Crullers, precious,” she said, patting the round rosy cheek nearest her. “The girls from our own crowd are coming over to Glenwood on Saturday, and you ask Miss Calvert to let you come along with them. I have a plan ahead for the summer, and maybe you could go with us. Who knows? Don’t cry. I never cry except when things are all wrong, and I can’t fix them right. We’ll find a way.”

The Admiral called in the hallway outside,

“Polly! Time’s up.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Polly, promptly, and with a final pat on poor Crullers’ head, she caught up her cloak and the chafing-dish from the hall settee, and joined the Admiral at the door of the reception room.

Miss Calvert was standing beside him, and the tears came in her eyes as she looked at Polly, slender and sweet in her gown of softest white mull.

“I shall miss her this summer more than any of my girls, Admiral,” she said, half sadly. “She has done more this year towards giving the other girls the right point of view—”

“Now, Miss Honoria, I must insist that you stop filling Polly’s head with such ideas,” laughed the Admiral, his eyes twinkling proudly, as he bent over Miss Calvert’s hand with the old-time grace of a gentleman who could call Virginia his home state.

“Don’t you believe him, Miss Calvert,” Polly said severely. “He’s a great deal worse than you are. If it wasn’t for mother’s good, sensible, Massachusetts spirit in me, I’d be so puffed up that I’d blow away with the first strong breeze. But I do like to be praised, indeed, I do. I just love to be loved and appreciated.”

Miss Calvert kissed her, and stood in the doorway, as the two went down the broad steps from the veranda. The Admiral’s carriage was waiting, with old Balaam on the box, smiling till his face looked like a piece of shirred black satin. The Admiral handed Polly into the carriage as if she had been a duchess, and turned to bow once again to Miss Calvert.

“Isn’t she a dear?” said Polly, with a sigh of genuine comfort, as the carriage turned the corner, and the broad riverside road lay before them. “It doesn’t seem as though I had finished my Freshman year at school, grandfather.”

“Finished?” repeated the Admiral. “Why, bless my heart, girlie, you’ve just begun now. Three more years at the Hall, then four years in college, and then after that I rather think you and I will tramp around some rare old corners of this old world that I know of just to freshen up. And when you come back your aunts will make a society bud of you, and I shall lose my little messmate.”

Polly’s eyes were grave in an instant. As she put her head down on the broad shoulder nearest her, and rubbed her cheek on it, very much like a satisfied kitten.

“You’ll never lose me, grandfather. Don’t you know what mother always said? We were worse than twins, the way we always stood by each other, and chummed together. Don’t you remember?”

The Admiral stared at Balaam’s back in front of them. And then he coughed vigorously, and patted the hand on his knee. It was nearly four years since Polly’s mother had passed over the mysterious bourne, from which, we are told, no traveler returns. Polly had been ten then, and four aunts had offered separately to bring her up properly. But the Admiral had stood firmly on his rights, and Polly had remained at home with the Admiral, and her old mammy, Aunty Welcome, to give orders. Welcome had been in the family since Balaam was first made coachman, but no one could even guess her age.

“Doan’t ask me sech foolish questions, chile,” she used to say to Polly. “I dun kept ’count till I was ninety, den I lost track, and I ain’t had no buffday since.”

She stood at the entrance to the drive now, when the carriage turned into the grounds of Glenwood, the Admiral’s spacious home on the river bank. Nearly as tall as the Admiral she was, and spare and strong as some fine old weather-beaten pine. In spite of newer fashions, she wore her bandana folded turbanwise around her head, and beneath it a few gray wisps of hair could be seen. Her under lip protruded greatly, “jes’ on account of making dat chile behave herself,” she used to say. To-day, she was smiling grimly, and her deep-set eyes sparkled like old jet as she looked at the slender figure in white sitting up so sedately beside the Admiral.

“Don’t you know ’nuff to raise dat parasol, and pertect dis chile’s complexion, Admiral?” she demanded, haughtily. “Has I got to watch over her when she’s out of my sight? Ain’t she got a terrible leaning towards freckles anyway? Wouldn’t she look fine under her snow white bridal veil all brown freckles? I declar’ I’m ashamed of you, Admiral, I suttainly am.”

Polly laughed as she stepped from the carriage and, slipping one arm around the old figure, entered the big house. But Welcome scolded firmly all the way upstairs to the large, cool south chamber that had been Polly’s special domain ever since Welcome herself had carried her into it, a wee baby.

It was a delightful room, the dearest in all the world, Polly thought. The south windows overlooked the garden, and below the river gleamed like silver through the thick foliage and clambering vines. Over the old gray stone walls, rambled Virginia creeper, pushing its tendrils even around the window casements, and if one leaned far out, one might pick a cluster of sweet, old-fashioned climbing bride’s roses, from the vine that wound itself around the trellis just beneath Polly’s pet window.

“Aunty, don’t I look ’most grown-up?”

Polly stopped for a moment before the long mirror between the windows, and looked at herself thoughtfully.

“’Deed, you don’t,” Welcome responded, resolutely. “Ain’t nuffin’ but a baby. Getting so self-compinionated, dere won’t be any living with you, chile, not a bit.”

“I want long dresses pretty soon.” Polly put the idea suggestively, her brown eyes full of mischief.

“Long dresses! For mercy sakes. Hyar dat chile talk. Don’t need long dresses any more’n a toad needs a side pocket.”

Polly laughed as she slipped out of her white dress and into a simpler one for home use; then ran downstairs to join her grandfather. On the right hand side of the lower hall was the Admiral’s own private retreat, from which Polly herself was barred admission, save by special permit. When she reached the foot of the stairs, she hesitated, and listened. The hallway divided the house equally, running its full length, with great doorways at either end, opening on broad verandas. Every evening before dinner, Polly and the Admiral walked in the garden, and told each other the happenings of the day. It was an old sweet custom, that dated back to Polly’s toddling days, and they both looked forward to it as the happy climax to each day’s routine.

Polly took a golf cape from the hall rack, and threw it around her shoulders. Although it was the end of June, the evenings were still cool along the river, and Aunty Welcome would scold if she went out into the night unprotected.

Stretched out at full length before the doorway was Tan, the old setter. He lifted his head, bent one friendly ear towards her, and beat his long, silky tail lazily on the floor.

“Tan, you old goose,” said Polly, kneeling beside him, “why don’t you make a fuss over me? Don’t you know this is one of the golden days of life for me? You might at least bark! I suppose you’re waiting till I finish Calvert Hall and college besides. Well, let me tell you, sir, it is something to be through your Freshman year at Calvert Hall. It is hard work, I’d have you know.”

Tan dozed lazily off while she talked to him. She rose with a little sigh, and went softly out into the garden. On the top step she paused, just for a minute, and lifted her face to the evening light. Polly loved that old garden. During babyhood and childhood it had been her wonderland of enchantment, her play country of mystery and make-believe. It was just sunset now, and the mellow light turned the old gray walls of the house into battlements of splendor. The garden stretched primly before her, with its beds of flowers, trimly-cut hedges and last of all, four terraces sloping to the river. An old cypress stood guard at the rustic steps leading down to the boat landing. Polly hurried along the narrow paths until she came to the spot the Admiral loved best. In the old days she had always called it the Wishing Seat, for if one caught the Admiral there at the sunset hour, and wished a really good wish, it was almost always sure to come true. Beneath an apple tree it stood, with banks of lilacs behind it. A rose bush drooped over one corner, a bush of old-fashioned musk roses that Polly’s mother had planted there years ago, palest pink, and so fragrant that even at twilight the humming birds fluttered around them lovingly.

There had been a sun dial near the old Roman seat, but only the pedestal was left, and that was overgrown with morning-glory vines. When Polly’s brown curls had barely reached the top of the dial, she had loved to climb the two steps of the stone pedestal and pick off the little trumpet shaped buds, and “pop” them. Didn’t you ever do it? It’s lots of fun.

The Admiral sat as usual on the old seat, his iron gray hair upcurling from his high forehead, as Polly had told him once, for all the world like a surprised cockatoo. He was resting placidly after the unaccustomed excitement of the Commencement exercises, and Polly looked down at him with a certain secret pride before she made her presence known. He was so altogether right, she had decided long ago, this grandfather Admiral of hers. He had been retired from active service for years, and still she never could understand how the naval forces of the country managed to get along without him. He was seventy now, but as tall and straight-shouldered as a certain naval cadet in the full-length oil painting over the mantel in the library. His cheek was as rosy and clear as Polly’s own, and his eyes like hers were as brown and bright as a robin’s. He wore a moustache and long imperial, both silver white, and there was an air of distinction about him that was totally indescribable. Polly declared that even the cab horses standing around the Capitol grounds bowed their heads when the Admiral passed by. She slipped her hands over his eyes now, before he had discovered her presence.

“Guess?”

“Bless me, I couldn’t possibly.”

“Oh, please.” In Polly’s gentlest, most persuasive tone.

“I haven’t the remotest idea who it could be.”

“Then you have to pay a forfeit.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then slipped into the seat beside him.

“Admiral grandfather darling, listen to me.” It was Polly’s regular way of opening up a serious discussion. “The girls are coming to-morrow, no, day after to-morrow, Saturday. There are seven of us altogether, Sue Warner, Ruth Brooks, Kate Julian, ‘Ted’ Moore, Isabel Lee, ‘Crullers’ Adams and my own self. Do you think Aunt Milly will mind my bringing so many?”

The Admiral chuckled.

“So many? Seven girls, with Welcome and an old chap like myself to look in on you once in a while to keep you out of hot water,—that’s not many, Polly.”

Polly’s face brightened.

“I’m so glad you think so. I was half afraid we should be too many. And it wouldn’t do to ask one or two or three, and leave out any, because we are all mates. You understand, don’t you, dear?”

The Admiral said he understood perfectly, and Polly paused long enough to hug him, before she asked,

“Have you ever seen the place at all?”

“In a general way, but I don’t remember much about it. It’s a quiet, pretty bay, and there’s a village at one end and a row of summer cottages along the shore. I went up there to attend a regatta one year, the first year Milly joined the yacht club. She did it for the sake of the boys, because they were very enthusiastic over their new boats.”

“But you’ve never been on Lost Island.”

“Never.”

“It’s got such a queer name, hasn’t it? Lost Island. I wonder if it ever did get lost.”

“I believe it did. Seems to me that Milly used to tell how the shore line shifted about with winter storms, but you girls won’t be there in stormy weather. If you catch a few heavy equinoctials along at the end of August, it’s about all you can expect. From what Milly wrote to me, it is altogether sheltered from the open sea, and the very best place you could possibly find for a club for girls. Better figure on a good stock of life preservers.”

“I did put down life preservers, grandfather,” Polly said seriously. “And I showed Aunty the list, and what do you suppose she said? She told me that Annie May’s doughnuts would make the best ones she knew anything about. Isn’t that delicious?”

“Is you out in dat dew and damp, all uncovered, chile?”

Welcome’s resolute tones rang out from the upper window, and Polly obeyed instantly. She might coax and persuade the Admiral, but with Welcome there was no compromise, and Polly knew it.

“I’m coming right in-doors now, Aunty.”

“Well, I should say you was. Dis window sill’s jest a-soppin’ wet now. Admiral, you ain’t got any more common sense about dat chile’s welfare dan if you was a stotin’ bottle.”

The Admiral rose from the stone seat and tried to argue the point, while Polly’s dimples danced mischievously at the quick fire between the two. Dearly did she love a bout between them.

“Aunty Welcome, I really must insist, I really must, on your treating me with a little more respect.” It was comical to listen to the Admiral’s appealing tones. “I cannot stand such talk forever. Even a worm will turn, Welcome, you know, even a worm.”

“Pouf,” came from old Aunty’s indignant lips. “Whoever heard of a worm’s a-doing anything when it did turn? You come along in out of dat night air, sah, or you’ll get de collywobbles you’-sef. Come along, now.”

The window closed emphatically, and Polly meekly slipped her arm around the Admiral’s elbow, and they went up to the house together.