The History of Mr. Polly

“Let’s talk,” she said, and for a time they were both tongue-tied.

Mr. Polly’s literary proclivities had taught him that under such circumstances a strain of gallantry was demanded.  And something in his blood repeated that lesson.

“You make me feel like one of those old knights,” he said, “who rode about the country looking for dragons and beautiful maidens and chivalresque adventures.”

“Oh!” she said.  “Why?”

“Beautiful maiden,” he said.

She flushed under her freckles with the quick bright flush those pretty red-haired people have.  “Nonsense!” she said.

“You are.  I’m not the first to tell you that.  A beautiful maiden imprisoned in an enchanted school.”

“You wouldn’t think it enchanted!”

“And here am I—­clad in steel.  Well, not exactly, but my fiery war horse is anyhow.  Ready to absquatulate all the dragons and rescue you.”

She laughed, a jolly laugh that showed delightfully gleaming teeth.  “I wish you could see the dragons,” she said with great enjoyment.  Mr. Polly felt they were a sun’s distance from the world of everyday.

“Fly with me!” he dared.

She stared for a moment, and then went off into peals of laughter.  “You are funny!” she said.  “Why, I haven’t known you five minutes.”

“One doesn’t—­in this medevial world.  My mind is made up, anyhow.”

He was proud and pleased with his joke, and quick to change his key neatly.  “I wish one could,” he said.

“I wonder if people ever did!”

“If there were people like you.”

“We don’t even know each other’s names,” she remarked with a descent to matters of fact.

“Yours is the prettiest name in the world.”

“How do you know?”

“It must be—­anyhow.”

“It is rather pretty you know—­it’s Christabel.”

“What did I tell you?”

“And yours?”

“Poorer than I deserve.  It’s Alfred.”

“I can’t call you Alfred.”

“Well, Polly.”

“It’s a girl’s name!”

For a moment he was out of tune.  “I wish it was!” he said, and could have bitten out his tongue at the Larkins sound of it.

“I shan’t forget it,” she remarked consolingly.

“I say,” she said in the pause that followed.  “Why are you riding about the country on a bicycle?”

“I’m doing it because I like it.”

She sought to estimate his social status on her limited basis of experience.  He stood leaning with one hand against the wall, looking up at her and tingling with daring thoughts.  He was a littleish man, you must remember, but neither mean-looking nor unhandsome in those days, sunburnt by his holiday and now warmly flushed.  He had an inspiration to simple speech that no practised trifler with love could have bettered.  “There is love at first sight,” he said, and said it sincerely.

She stared at him with eyes round and big with excitement.

“I think,” she said slowly, and without any signs of fear or retreat, “I ought to get back over the wall.”

“It needn’t matter to you,” he said.  “I’m just a nobody.  But I know you are the best and most beautiful thing I’ve ever spoken to.”  His breath caught against something.  “No harm in telling you that,” he said.

“I should have to go back if I thought you were serious,” she said after a pause, and they both smiled together.

After that they talked in a fragmentary way for some time.  The blue eyes surveyed Mr. Polly with kindly curiosity from under a broad, finely modelled brow, much as an exceptionally intelligent cat might survey a new sort of dog.  She meant to find out all about him.  She asked questions that riddled the honest knight in armour below, and probed ever nearer to the hateful secret of the shop and his normal servitude.  And when he made a flourish and mispronounced a word a thoughtful shade passed like the shadow of a cloud across her face.

“Boom!” came the sound of a gong.

“Lordy!” cried the girl and flashed a pair of brown legs at him and was gone.

Then her pink finger tips reappeared, and the top of her red hair.  “Knight!” she cried from the other side of the wall.  “Knight there!”

“Lady!” he answered.

“Come again to-morrow!”

“At your command.  But——­”

“Yes?”

“Just one finger.”

“What do you mean?”

“To kiss.”

The rustle of retreating footsteps and silence….

But after he had waited next day for twenty minutes she reappeared, a little out of breath with the effort to surmount the wall—­and head first this time.  And it seemed to him she was lighter and more daring and altogether prettier than the dreams and enchanted memories that had filled the interval.