'People are almost too kind; I wish they would not come and talk to me so,' Polly said, with one of her pretty pouts, as she walked with Dr. Heriot that evening. He was a little shy of courting in public, and loved better to have her with him in one of their quiet walks; this evening he had come again to fetch her, and Mildred had given him some instruction as to the length and duration of their walk. 'Had you not better come with us?' he had said to her, as though he meant it; but Mildred shook her head with a slight smile. 'We shall all meet you at Ewbank Scar; it is better for you to have the child to yourself for a little,' she had replied. Polly wished that Aunt Milly had come with them after all. Dearly as she loved her kind guardian and friend, she was still a little shy of him; a consciousness of girlish incompleteness, of undeveloped youth, haunted her perpetually. Polly was sufficiently quick-witted to feel her own deficiencies. How should she ever be able to satisfy him? she thought. Aunt Milly could talk so beautifully to him, and even Olive had brief spasms of eloquence. Polly felt sometimes as she listened to them as though she were craning her neck to look over a wall at some unknown territory with strange elevations and giddy depths, and wide bridgeless rivers meandering through it. Suppositions, vague imaginations, oppressed her; Polly could talk sensibly in a grave matter-of-fact way, and at times she had a pretty _piquante_ language of her own; but Chriss's erudition, and Olive's philosophy, and even Mildred's gentle sermonising, were wearying to her. 'I can talk about what I have seen and what I have heard and read,' she said once, 'but I cannot play at talk--make believe--as you grown-up children do. I think it is hard,' continued practical Polly, 'that Aunt Milly, who has seen nothing, and has been shut up in a sickroom all the best years of her life, can spin yards of talk where I cannot say a word.' But Dr. Heriot found no fault with his young companion; on the contrary, Polly's _naïveté_ and freshness were infinitely refreshing to the weary man, who, as he told himself, had lived out the best years of his life. He looked at her now as she uttered her childish complaint. One little gloved hand rested on his arm, the other held up the long skirts daintily, under the broad-brimmed hat a pretty oval face dimpled and blushed with every word. 'If people would only not be so kind--if they would let me alone,' she grumbled. 'That is a singular grievance, Polly,' returned Dr. Heriot, smiling; 'happiness ought not to make us selfish.' 'That is what Aunt Milly says. Ah, how good she is!' sighed the girl, enviously; 'almost a saint. I wish I were more like her.' 'I am satisfied with Polly as she is, though she is no saint.' 'No, are you really?' looking up at him brightly. 'Do you know, I have been thinking a great deal since--you know when----' her colour giving emphasis to her unfinished sentence.