Part 26 (2/2)
”What does it mean?” queried Polly in a puzzled voice.
”Why, that he is going to be married!”
”O-h!”
”And that means that mamma and I must get out!”
”No, it doesn't!”
”Mamma says so.” David's head came down with decision. ”Mamma wouldn't stay to be in the way, and, oh, dear! Now you see why we are so worried.”
”But how do you know he takes a lady to ride?”
”Because I've seen her.”
”Who is it?”
”I can't tell--that's the trouble. We have known he went out alone, but we didn't think much about it till a week or so ago. I'd been up to Archie Howard's, and was coming home through Oregon Avenue,--you know how shady it is up there,--and just along by the Woodruffs' Uncle David whirled past me. I guess I was looking so hard to make sure it was he that I didn't notice the lady much, but it wasn't a man.”
”Was that all? That doesn't mean anything! Maybe he just happened to pick her up on her way home. He knows 'most everybody.”
”No, he didn't! If he did, he picked her up again two nights afterward, for I was down on Curtis Street, and just before I got to the avenue there they were! They were going like lightning, and I couldn't make out any more than I could before. The lady was on the other side of Uncle David; but I'm sure it was the same one.”
”But couldn't he take a lady to ride without marrying her?” asked Polly slowly.
”Why, I suppose some men do,” answered David; ”but mamma says when a man of his age--who hasn't been round with the ladies for years and years--takes one out evening after evening, it isn't for nothing. And mamma says, of course, when he brings a wife home we can't stay. Oh, I don't know what we shall do! I thought we should live here with Uncle David always. It is making mamma just sick. I know she keeps thinking of those dreadful years before he made up, and if we've got to go back to them again!”
”I wouldn't worry,” soothed Polly. ”Maybe it isn't anything at all. I don't b'lieve he'll get married. If he'd been going to, he'd have done it before he got so old.”
”He isn't very old. He's only a little over fifty.”
”That's old to get married, isn't it?”
”Oh, I don't know!” replied David absently.
”Well, I shall be married before I'm fifty,” announced Polly decidedly.
David laughed.
”Who you going to marry?” he chuckled.
”Why, of course I don't know yet,” she responded; ”but I shan't wait till I'm fifty years old.”
”No, I guess you won't,” he agreed.
The sound of light hoofs speeding down the street turned the attention from the weighty subject of marriage back to the Colonel himself.
”That isn't he, it's a little man,” observed Polly.
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