Adam sat close while Kate ate her supper, then he helped her unpack her trunk and hang away her dresses, and then they sat on the porch talking for a long time.

When at last they arose to go to bed Kate said:  “Adam, about Polly:  first time you see her, if she asks, tell her she left home of her own free will and accord, and in her own way, which, by the way, happens to be a Holt way; but you needn’t mention that.  I think by this time she has learned or soon she will learn that; and whenever she wants to come back and face me, to come right ahead.  I can stand it if she can.  Can you get that straight?”

Adam said he could.  He got that straight and so much else that by the time he finished, Polly realized that both he and her mother had left her in the house to try to Shield her; that if she had told what she wanted in a straightforward manner she might have had a wedding outfit prepared and been married from her home at a proper time and in a proper way, and without putting her mother to shame before the community.  Polly was very much ashamed of herself by the time Adam finished.  She could not find it in her heart to blame Henry; she knew he was no more to blame than she was; but she did store up a grievance against Mr. and Mrs. Peters.  They were older and had had experience with the world; they might have told Polly what she should do instead of having done everything in their power to make her do what she had done, bribing, coaxing, urging, all in the direction of her inclinations.

At heart Polly was big enough to admit that she had followed her inclinations without thinking at all what the result would be.  Adam never would have done what she had.  Adam would have thought of his mother and his name and his honour.  Poor little Polly had to admit that honour with her had always been a matter of, “Now remember,” “Be careful,” and like caution on the lips of her mother.

The more Polly thought, the worse she felt.  The worse she felt, the more the whole Peters family tried to comfort her.  She was violently homesick in a few days; but Adam had said she was to come when she “could face her mother,” and Polly suddenly found that she would rather undertake to run ten miles than to face her mother, so she began a process of hiding from her.  If she sat on the porch, and saw her mother coming, she ran in the house.  She would go to no public place where she might meet her.  For a few weeks she lived a life of working for Mrs. Peters from dawn to dark, under the stimulus of what a sweet girl she was, how splendidly she did things, how fortunate Henry was, interspersed with continual kissing, patting, and petting, all very new and unusual to Polly.  By that time she was so very ill, she could not lift her head from the pillow half the day, but it was to the credit of the badly disappointed Peters family that they kept up the petting.  When Polly grew better, she had no desire to go anywhere; she worked