CHAPTER VII.POLLY MAKES MATTERS RIGHT.
“POLLY,” said Phronsie the next morning, “I do wish Mamsie was here.”
It was the first time that Phronsie had said anything to show she wished the mother back; and Polly, who knew so well how all such utterance had been controlled, turned and stared at her.
“I do really wish that Mamsie was home again,” said Phronsie, this time with a sigh, shaking her head decidedly.
“How you can, Phronsie,” broke in Polly impulsively, “oh, I don’t see, when you know how Mamsie needed the change, and how she would never let Papa-Doctor go alone! O Phronsie!”
But in spite of that, “O Phronsie!” Phronsie still reiterated, “Yes, I do wish she was here!” And then she told the reason.
“Poor Grace,” she said, “is crying, and Mamsie would know what to say to her.”
“She shouldn’t cry,” said Polly vexedly. “Dear me, I think it is the weakest thing after a person has done wrongly to cry over it.”
“Ah, but Grace was very wrong,” said Phronsie sadly; “and she can’t help it, Polly, when it all comes over her again. Just think, she disobeyed her aunt.”
“To disobey mother” had always been such a heinous crime in the “Pepper children’s” eyes, that Polly’s work dropped in her lap, and she sat as still as Phronsie for the space of a moment. Then she said brightly to cheer Phronsie, “But it doesn’t help matters any to cry over it. Yet to be sure,” very suddenly, “I cried dreadfully when I’d been cross and hateful to Mrs. Chatterton. To be sure, so I did.”
Suddenly Polly laid down her work, and went swiftly out of the room. She positively ran into the pretty bed-chamber where, under the white hangings, Grace was sobbing her young heart out.
“Dear child,” said Polly, kneeling down by the bed, and laying a steady and gentle hand on the shaking figure, “I know just how you feel; for I cried once, just as miserably as you are crying, because I had been wicked.”
“Youwicked!” cried Grace, backing up so suddenly that Polly was nearly upset, “O Mrs. King, that could never be!”
“Ah, Grace, but it was; and it was much worse for me to be wicked, for I had had Mamsie all my life,—and you don’t know what our Mamsie was,—while you have been away from your mother, you said, ever since you were six years old.”
“Dear child,” said Polly, “I know just how you feel.”“Dear child,” said Polly, “I know just how you feel.”
“Dear child,” said Polly, “I know just how you feel.”
“Dear child,” said Polly, “I know just how you feel.”
“Yes,” said Grace. It was some relief that she did not have to tell that boarding-school life as she had found it in New England schools was ever so many degrees better than those years could have been under the nominal care of a mother given up to her own pursuits.
“And I was rude and hateful to a poor sick old woman,” said Polly suddenly, laying her soft, warm hand on Grace’s shaking ones; “and I said awfully cruel things to her, Grace; oh, you can’t think how it makes me feel now to remember them!”
A tear or two crept out of Polly’s eyes as she said this, and dropped on the counterpane.
“Why, you’re crying yourself, Mrs. King!” exclaimed Grace, lifting her red, swollen eyelids in astonishment.
“I know it,” said Polly, smiling brightly, and dashing off the tears with a quick hand. “You can’t think how it makes me feel, Grace, after all these years, to remember what I said to old Mrs. Chatterton.”
“She must have been horrid to you to have made you say those things,” said Grace stoutly. “I just hate her, to make you feel badly even now.”
It was a new thing to comfort any one else and she pulled away one of her hands from Polly’s clasp, and laid it on Mrs. King’s shoulder, forgetting her own misery while she did so.
“She didn’t make me,” corrected Polly, “never mind what she said to me. Mamsie always used to say no one but ourselves could make us do and say things. No, Grace; it was because I lost my temper. Oh, I was so frightfully angry, I remember! And then I went up-stairs as hard as I could run, wishing every step that I could only get back the words I had uttered; and I hid in the trunk-room, and got down on the floor, and cried and cried—oh, how I cried! And then, when I finally came out and went down-stairs, everybody was hurrying about, troubled and anxious, because Mrs. Chatterton was ill; and then I thought that I had killed her.”
“Oh, dear me!” said Grace.
“And after that,” went on Polly, “I can’t tell you how I felt. But I didn’t cry any more. I just tried to do something for the poor woman. And after the longest time, Grandpapa told me Mrs. Chatterton had received bad news,—her favorite nephew had been drowned at sea.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Grace. “I mean, I’m glad that you knew it wasn’t anything you had said that made her sick. Well, do please go on, Mrs. King.”
“This all happened—the telegram coming, I mean—while I was up in the trunk-room,” said Polly; “so of course I did not hear the news, though everybody thought I had. But I felt, oh, so dreadfully, that I had made her unhappy just before that awful blow came. And I shall always remember it.”
“Please don’t feel badly, dear Mrs. King,” begged Grace softly, turning comforter. “Oh! I wish you wouldn’t,” gently patting Polly’s shoulder.
“But I did not cry any more,” said Polly. “I remember I used to squeeze the tears back, when they seemed determined to come, as I thought about it; for Mamsie had told us it was very wicked to cry over anything we had done, because it distressed every one about us.”
“Did she?” asked Grace with great interest, as a wholly new idea struck her. “Why, I thought one’s eyes were one’s own, and one could do as she pleased with ’em.”
“Ah, but you see, no one of us can do as she pleases, Grace,” said Polly, shaking her head. “That you will find out more and more, the older you grow. And besides, Mamsie said it was a great sign of weakness to give yourself up to fits of crying after you had done wrongly. I remember what she used to tell us: ‘To set about righting the wrong was better than a million tears.’”
“Mrs. King,” exclaimed Grace suddenly, letting her hand fall idle on the bedspread, to peer into Polly’s face, “I think your mother must have been just the nicest”—mother, she was going to say, but pulled herself up in time—“person in all this world.”
“Oh, you can’t guess what she was—what she is,” cried Polly warmly, “till you see our Mamsie.”
“And I won’t cry another single bit,” declared Grace, setting her lips tightly together; and doubling up her handkerchief into a little wad, she threw it to the foot of the bed, as a thing for which there could be no further use.
“That’s right, dear,” said Polly, setting a kiss on the flushed cheek; “because, you see, it troublesPhronsie dreadfully. She’s made almost sick by it, Grace. You can’t think”—and Polly’s face drooped.
“Oh, dear, dear!” wailed Grace remorsefully, and wriggling about in distress; “what have I done? Oh! please, dear Mrs. King, do tell her I’ve stopped crying, and that I never will cry again in all this world. Please hurry, and tell her so this very minute.”
“So I will,” promised Polly cheerily, and going out. “And I will ask her to come in and see for herself how good you are.” She gave her a bright smile that seemed to hop right down into the sorry heart, telling her there was still some comfort left for her.
When Polly next looked in, about an hour after, Grace was propped up against the pillows, her fingers busy with one of the sails for the boys’ boats, Phronsie sitting by her side, stitching away on the counterpart. A little table was drawn up to the side of the bed, with the work materials on it; and Phronsie had just been telling something gleeful, for Grace broke into a merry little laugh.
“Now, this looks something like,” said Pollyapprovingly in the doorway. She had her walking things on. “Grace, dear,” she said, coming in and standing at the foot of the bed, “I am going to town this morning; and I thought I would go around and see your aunt, Mrs. Atherton,—I wrote her so last night,—and report how well you are getting on. It will save her the trouble of coming out. And now, do you wish me to do anything for you?”
She sent a keen glance out of her clear brown eyes full into the troubled face.
Grace threw down her work. “Mrs. King,” she cried, while the hot blood went all over her face, “I told Miss Phronsie I’d like to write to Miss Willoughby, and tell her all about it.”
“You cannot write,” said Polly, while a gleam of pleasure came into her face, “until Dr. Phillips has been here and said you can. But I will go to Miss Willoughby, and tell her everything you say.”
“Will you, Mrs. King?” cried Grace. “But oh, won’t it trouble you too much?”
“No,” said Polly, “it will not trouble me too much, child.”
“Mrs. King,” said Grace, brokenly, and claspingher hands, “will you please ask Miss Willoughby to forgive me for the disgrace I’ve brought on her school; and please tell her I didn’t think of that when I began. I thought it was only myself I had to consider. And please tell her I mean to study and do everything I can to please her after this. But perhaps she won’t let me ever come back to her day-school;” and Grace’s face became suddenly overcast, as if she were going to cry; but she bit her lips, and held her hands tightly together instead. “Then I suppose I must bear it.”
“I’ll tell her every word,” said Polly. “Anything else, dear?”
“If you could see Mrs. Drysdale, and tell her how sorry I am, perhaps some time, in several years, she’ll forgive me for disgracing her so. Oh, and do tell dear Bella that she mustn’t mind if Aunt Fay should happen to say anything cross to her, because everybody knows now that Bella didn’t want to take me here, but I made her.”
“Anything else?” asked Polly, after a pause. “How about the hired bonnet and dress at the milliner’s?”
“Oh, dear, dear!” cried Grace, with a rush ofdismay at the throng of bad results of her wrongdoing; “you can’t do all these things, Mrs. King! Oh, dear me! what shall I do?”
“Grace,” said Polly warningly.
Grace looked up and struggled with her tears, but she could not say anything for a minute. Then she broke out, “She said it would be five dollars for the two; and my pocket-book is at home. There’s plenty in it,” she added hastily, in confusion, “for papa had just sent me on my allowance; but I can’t get at it.”
“I shall go in and pay Madame Le Farge,” said Polly quietly, “and then you can pay me afterward, Grace. And Mrs. Higby is to pack up the dress and bonnet, and send them in by express. And Mrs. Atherton is to send your trunk out to-day. Then, dear, you will be quite comfortable as to clothes. Good-by;” and Polly came around to the side of the bed, and leaned over the back of the little table, and kissed her.
Grace, regardless of the fine walking-dress with its dainty bonnet and lace boa, threw both arms around Polly’s neck, and hugged her close.
“Take care,” warned Phronsie.
“Never mind,” said Polly, taking a rosy facefrom the embrace; “no harm is done. That is just the way we all used to fly at Mamsie. All right, Gracie;” going off with a smile.
“And now I’ve gone and done the wrong thing again,” mourned Grace in confusion, huddling down into the bed, and not looking at the discarded sail. “Oh, dear me! I wish I could think in time.”
“King wants his boat-sails this afternoon, Grace,” said Phronsie gently, “and I promised them.”
So Grace picked up the boat-sail, with its needle sticking in it just as she had thrown it aside, and Phronsie gathered up the narrative of some funny mishaps they had in a little German town when they were all last abroad, and presently they were both as merry again as before; and only the Dresden clock on the white mantel interrupted them.
Without a bit of warning, the door that Polly had left ajar was pushed wide open, and a tall figure appeared just about to stalk in. “Oh, beg your pardon!” he exclaimed, beating a retreat.
“O Joel!” cried Phronsie, jumping out of her chair to run across the room and into the tall figure’s arms, “when did you come?”
“Just got here,” said Joel; “walked from the station; didn’t run across anybody but Patsy on the grounds. Anybody sick? and who’s that?” nodding into the room, as they had now edged off into the hall.
“That’s a friend,” said Phronsie, “who only came yesterday, and she fell and hurt her foot. O Joe, it is so good to see you!”
“Yes, it is good to be here,” cried Joel, feasting his eyes on her. “Well, where’s Polly?”
“Gone to town,” said Phronsie; “and she said we were not to wait luncheon for her.”
“That’s too bad,” said Joel, “for I must be off this afternoon;” and he pulled out his watch. “And now I’ll tell you, Phronsie, what I’ve come for. I want you and Grandpapa to go back with me for a few weeks. I can’t tell you why now, only that I want you both. I’m dead tired of being alone. Now, do persuade him to come, Phronsie.” Joel took her hand and held it close, his other arm being around her.
“O Joel!” cried Phronsie in great dismay, “I can’t go just now. Could you wait a few days, perhaps a week; could you, Joey dear?”
A sound very much like a groan came from theroom behind them. Phronsie tore herself away from Joel, stepped back, and shut the door. “Oh, how could I be so careless!” she said remorsefully. “Now she’s heard every word we said, poor thing.”