CHAPTER XIISESAME AND LILIES
AFTER her resting hour on the bed Polly took her book again from the low shelf and read another ten pages. Before Miss Pomeroy went to her room after dinner, Polly asked for a pencil and paper, and Miss Hetty gave her a pad of smooth paper in a pretty linen cover, to which a sharp pencil was attached by a long red ribbon.
“Another present!” the little girl exclaimed when Miss Pomeroy told her she was to keep the pad “for her very own.”
“Another present,” said the mistress of the house, smiling down into the brown eyes, and she kissed Polly as she stood at the foot of the stairs.
Polly’s head felt warm and tired, and she longed to run out into the woods with her book, but with the thought of Eleanor in her mind, she set her lips firmly and took her seat on the south porch, and began her self-appointed task. Polly would have been spared a good deal of trouble if she could have overheard what Miss Pomeroy was saying to Arctura, while the little girl sat so quietly reading and copying words from the leather-covered book to the paper in her lap.
“I don’t know just what to make of little Mary,” said Miss Pomeroy, looking rather disturbed. “She is so busy reading and writing that she didn’t hear me come downstairs, and she is reading a book by Ruskin which is suitable for grown people, and I don’t see how she can possibly understand it, or enjoy it. Yet there she sits, copying a few words ‘to look up in the dictionary,’ she told me. Do you suppose most little girls of ten nowadays would do that? Of course, you and I haven’t had anything to do with children for a long time,” said Miss Pomeroy gravely. “I might ride over to Maple Hill and ask Mrs. Manser if Mary had been used to books, but I dislike the woman, and I should not prefer to do it.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” said Arctura, easily. “Probably she’s kind of forward for her age, but I guess we can liven her up by degrees. She’s real fond of a good time, provided it’s quiet now. You see she eats a good deal and she don’t exercise much, and take that with her nap every afternoon and reading so long, I expect she feels sort of dull some of the time. She’s a good deal livelier at her work than I am,” said Miss Green, handsomely, “and she’s a sweet little thing if ever there was one in this world. I’m getting fond of her right along. Come Monday, how would it be if I should speak of her going out to play awhile in the afternoon? She could take her book along to the woods. I can tell her of a place. We’ve got to make a start with her sometime.”
Miss Pomeroy cordially approved this plan. After a few minutes she went out on the porch, and soon she and Polly started for a walk. Miss Pomeroy was a little troubled with rheumatism, so the walk was not a brisk one, but Polly stepped soberly along at her side, and together they talked of the birds and the flowers. They saw and heard eight birds that day, and Polly recounted them to Arctura after supper—a robin, a crow, a ground sparrow, a song sparrow, a blue jay, a phœbe-bird, a red-winged blackbird, and a thrush.
“Spring is upon us without a doubt,” said Polly, joyfully quoting Miss Pomeroy. “And, oh, it’s so pretty along the edges of the road, Miss Arctura!”
“How’d you like to go off into the woods with your book, some day?” suggested Miss Green, and she was mystified by the look that came into the child’s eyes.
“I’d like to very much, if Miss Pomeroy thinks best,” said Polly, quietly, but her heart was dancing.
Meanwhile Miss Pomeroy was looking at the top sheet of Polly’s pad, laid on the dictionary, “for I think I will find out about those words before I read any more,” Polly had said. This was the list: “Acquirement, mercenary, punctilious, sagacity, concomitants, unsullied, devastated, macadamization, trivial, boulevard, burgher, martello, vestige, erroneous, consecutive, assigned.”
“You understand all the words you have read except these?” questioned Miss Pomeroy, with her keen eyes on Polly’s flushed face, as the little girl straightened up from her study of the big dictionary when bedtime came.
“No, ma’am,” said Polly, honestly, “but I could guess most of the other long ones, and I wanted to get on with the book.” Then suddenly the little girl felt very brave. “Would—would Eleanor have known all those words without the dictionary? all of them?” she ventured.
“My dear child,” said Miss Pomeroy, gently—and she did not look as if she were at all vexed—“my dear little Mary, there are several of those words I myself should be obliged to look up in the dictionary before I dared try to tell anyone exactly what they meant. Now run along to bed, and get to sleep as fast as ever you can,” and Miss Pomeroy bent her head and kissed the bright face upturned to hers.
“That’s twice to-day,” said Polly, hugging herself as she lay in bed, just before the Sandman carried her off to Slumber-land. “That’s twice to-day she kissed me! I guess I’m getting on pretty well. I believe I must be!”
[TO BE CONTINUED]
“The world goes up, and the world goes down,And the sunshine follows the rain,And yesterday’s sneer and yesterday’s frown,Can never come over again.”—Kingsley.
“The world goes up, and the world goes down,And the sunshine follows the rain,And yesterday’s sneer and yesterday’s frown,Can never come over again.”—Kingsley.
“The world goes up, and the world goes down,And the sunshine follows the rain,And yesterday’s sneer and yesterday’s frown,Can never come over again.”
“The world goes up, and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain,
And yesterday’s sneer and yesterday’s frown,
Can never come over again.”
—Kingsley.
—Kingsley.