The Milwaukee Leader

Daily Novelette

What Puzzled Polly
BY RUBY DOUGLAS.

Pauline Verlane was a librarian in a college town. Nothing in the way of college physiognomy could thrill her.

"I'm all fed up on these college lads," she remarked one day to some girls who had dropped in to walk home with her.

"What have they done now, my dear?" asked one of the girls.

"Nothing more than usual. As soon as they get to sophomores they begin to call me Polly, and it happened today that a new crop of them came in and it—"

"Sort o' got your goat, Polly, isn't that it?" finished her friend.

Polly laughed. "That's as good a way to put it as any."

It was not long before Polly was in her usual good humor, and then one of the girls ventured:

"Many girls would give their fur coats to be in your position. Such an opportunity to meet all the nice college men."

"They could have the job if I didn't need the money," she confessed.

"Just what do you like in the man line?"

"Nothing young, anyway," declared Polly vehemently.

"Going to be an old man's darling?"

"If anybody's," said Polly dryly.

They left her at the gate and walked on up the street toward their various homes. As girls will, they decided to have a little fun at her expense.

A few days later a serious-voiced person asked Miss Pauline Verlane, as she sat over some work at her desk in the library, for a dictionary of obsolete and archaic words.

She glanced up at him casually to see that he was not a college student and gave him the titles of several such volumes and said that she would get as many as he liked.

"One will do for the present—any one," he said gloomily.

Pauline was mildly interested in what he wanted with obsolete definitions when he looked so obsolete himself.

He had seated himself at a reference table and she placed the book before him. He thanked her without looking up and, although she could not help contrasting his lack of gallantry with the too-effusive manners of the college lads, she rather liked his matter-of-fact way of going about what he wanted. He was wasting no time.

Polly became very busy and absorbed in other patrons and did not give the man another thought until, a day or two later, he arrived again, gloomier than ever, and asked for another such volume together with Bulfinch's Mythology.

This time Polly watched him.

Sure enough! He was doing cross-word puzzles.

"What ever can that old gloomy creature find in cross-word puzzles?" she remarked to one of the girls as they walked home together again. "It puzzles me the psychology of such a case."

"At least it's a change from your jazzy college lad."

"And a pleasant one," agreed Polly.

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, girls—I quite like the old fellow. There is something in his personality that appeals to my sympathy. He seems old before his time."

Indeed, Polly found the strange patron of the library so interesting that in every spare moment she found herself trying to help him with his puzzles.

One rainy afternoon they sat in a corner of the reference room after Polly was off duty and worked out together a particularly difficult cross-word problem.

The man took off his great horn-rimmed glasses and he had tumbled his hair about in his earnest thought over the puzzle. Polly looked at him curiously.

"What is the matter?" he asked, cheerfully and smiling.

"It's you—you looked so old and gloomy when you first came in here some weeks ago, and now—"

"Do you suppose it's the puzzles that have rejuvenated me?" he asked, still beaming on her with a smile that was anything but obsolete.

"It is something," said Polly. And for some reason or other she blushed.

"There is a wonderful flush of youth on your own face just now, if you don't mind my telling you," he said.

Polly seemed not to mind, for she let him walk home with her through the twilight that evening.

And then it all came out. He was not yet 30 and he was a college student. He had remarked to one of his girl colleagues that he quite liked the little librarian. She had promptly told him that if he expected to be noticed at all he must not be known as a college student nor must he seem callow in any way.

The girls, with his co-operation, had conceived the idea of his coming before Polly's notice in the guise of an antique person.

And thereby had hung the tale.

"You're sure, Polly dear," he said to her after all the explanations had been made, "that you will like me as well young—as old?"

Polly nodded.

"And you do not mind the subterfuge I had to resort to to get you to notice me? All's fair, you know, in love."

Polly admitted that it was.

"And you will marry me when—when I get about a year older?" he laughed.

And Polly said yes.

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