VI
"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.
