LITTLE POLLY PRENTISS
BY ELIZABETH LINCOLN GOULD
CHAPTER VI
A TRYING AFTERNOON
SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS
Polly Prentiss is an orphan who, for the greater part of her life, has lived with a distant relative, Mrs. Manser, the mistress of Manser Farm. Miss Hetty Pomeroy, a maiden lady of middle age, has, ever since the death of her favorite niece, been on the lookout for a little girl whom she might adopt. She is attracted by Polly’s appearance and quaint manners, and finally decides to take her home and keep her for a month’s trial. In the foregoing chapters, Polly has arrived at her new home, and the great difference between the way of living at Pomeroy Oaks and her past life affords her much food for wonderment.
“SO you like your new friends, my dear,” said Miss Hetty. “They must be banished to the shed now for their dinner while you and I eat ours. Do you hear Arctura’s signal to us?”
There came a sound unlike anything Polly had ever heard; it was not exactly a bell; she couldn’t imagine what it was. Miss Hetty held out her hand with a smile, and Polly, still with Snip and Snap on her shoulders, was led out of the library, across the porch hall to a big, sunny dining-room. On the table, at Miss Hetty’s place, stood a strange thing with three bronze cups upside down, a little one highest up, one somewhat larger under it, and one still larger at the bottom; at least that was the way it looked to Polly.
Arctura stood close to it with a little stick in her hand; she struck the bronze cups as Polly looked at her, and again the musical sound was heard.
“There, I reckoned you’d never heard anything like that!” said Arctura as she beamed on Polly, and then took the kittens from the little girl’s shoulders. “That’s a heathen invention, called a gong, brought to Miss Pomeroy by her Uncle Pete. I hope you’ll relish your food; I’ve got no time to sit down now,” said Arctura, and bearing Snip and Snap in her arms she marched out of a doorway through which there was a glimpse of the kitchen.
Arctura Green had never sat at the table with Miss Pomeroy in all the years of her faithful service, but it was understood to be purely a matter of choice on her part, and a few words were spoken now and then to make this state of affairs clear to any chance visitor.
Polly ate her steak and potato and fresh bread and butter, sitting opposite Miss Pomeroy, and only speaking in answer to questions. She looked at the spotless white table-cloth with its rose and fern pattern, at the shining glass tumblers, and the big glass water bottle, at the fat silver tea-pot and sugar-bowl, and the slender spoons and forks, at the knives, with mother-of-pearl handles, at the white plates with dull blue figures that matched those on the platter, and at the big bread plate with its gold rim. Then she looked at the buffet on which there were all sorts of shining things.
“It is because everything is so wonderful in the house that they like to stay here better than out-doors,” thought Polly, but in spite of everything her eyes turned wistfully to the window. The sunshine flickered and danced among the branches of the Pomeroy oaks, and Polly gave a half sigh as she looked at it.
“Don’t you like your pudding, my dear?” asked Miss Hetty, and the little girl turned quickly to her dinner again.
After dinner she followed Miss Pomeroy up the broad, shallow front stairs to the pretty room which had been prepared for her. It had a white bed, a white bureau, a white wash-stand, two little straight-backed white chairs, and a white rocking-chair. A pink stripe ran through the white near the edges of all these pieces of furniture, and Polly thought it was the most beautiful bed-room that could possibly be imagined.
“And here is your closet,” said Miss Hetty, as she opened a door, and showed what seemed to Polly like a good-sized room, with shelves and hooks. On the lowest shelf sat the big black enamel cloth bag, looking old and forlorn.
“Now, you’d better take out your things and put them away in the closet and the bureau, Mary,” said Miss Hetty, “and perhaps you’d like to lie down and rest awhile; I am going to take my nap now. When you wish to go downstairs you may, but I wouldn’t run out to-day, for the ground is so damp. I dare say you’ll find plenty to amuse you in the house, and you are free to go anywhere. I’m sure I can trust such a careful, quiet little girl as you are.”
When the door that led into Miss Pomeroy’s room across the hall was fairly shut, Polly executed a silent dance on the soft gray and pink carpet.
“I guess Mrs. Manser’d think I was doing pretty well,” said Polly, thrilling with pride. “I never was called ‘quiet’ or ‘careful’ before. She’d hardly believe it. I must be growing like Eleanor pretty fast. As soon as I’ve put away my things I shall lie right down on that bed. I wonder how long I ought to stay on it. I suppose most probably Eleanor would stay till she heard her aunt getting up; that’s what I’ll do. Mrs. Manser said most likely Miss Pomeroy would give me tests. I shall lie on that bed till I hear Miss Pomeroy if its—two hours,” said Polly, firmly, mentioning the longest space of time which she could conceive might be spent in sleeping by daylight.
Then Polly took the big bag out of the closet and proceeded to unpack it. There was her other new gingham frock on top of everything else; it had blue and white stripes, and was very pretty, Polly thought, as she laid it carefully away in the lowest of the four bureau drawers. Then came her little brown cashmere frock, made over from one which had done service for six years as Mrs. Manser’s Sunday gown; it was Polly’s Sunday best now, very brave with a little red piping around the neck and sleeves, and at the head of the ruffle. This Polly hung in the closet.
In the closet, too, went a very old and much-mended red frock which was always nearly hidden by long-sleeved and high-necked aprons. There were four of these, and two more new ones without sleeves. Polly was so small that there had been plenty of room in the big bag for all these things and for the little store of underclothes which went into the third drawer. The aprons had the second drawer to themselves, and in the top drawer there were Polly’s small handkerchiefs and one pair of little white cotton gloves, freshly washed.
Polly took the bag back to the closet after removing the very last thing, her work basket, which she put on the bureau, beside the fat pincushion. Looking at this cushion reminded her of hidden treasures, and diving into her petticoat pocket she brought forth Aunty Peebles’s gift, and then the knife; these Polly placed on a table, which stood near one of the two windows. Then, after looking about the room for a moment with an air of much satisfaction, Polly slipped off her little shoes, and folding her shawl about her shoulders after the manner of Mrs. Ramsdell when ready for a nap, she turned back the white quilt, and climbing sedately up on the bed, laid her head on the pillow and clasped her little hands.
“I don’t feel sleepy,” said Polly, “but that doesn’t make any difference. I’ve got plenty of things to think of. Perhaps Eleanor didn’t always go to sleep. There are all those leaks in Manser farm—they’ll get mended if I’m adopted. And this is a beautiful place, and I’m not going to be lonesome, a great girl like me, if ’tis pretty still here. I wonder what Miss Arctura Green is doing: and those kitties, I wonder where they are.”
An hour or so later Miss Hetty held a consultation with Arctura in the kitchen.
“I came down the back way so I should not wake that child,” said Miss Pomeroy. “She hasn’t stirred since she lay down, I verily believe. Do you think it’s natural for a little girl of her age to sleep nearly two hours at this time of day?”
“Why, you see we don’t either of us know much about children,” said Arctura, meditatively. “She looks pretty strong, but I notice her appetite’s nothing extra, and probably she’s all excited up and tired out. Seems to me, though, if she don’t stir by the end of another half hour I should kind of make a noise in my room if I was in your place, and wake her up gradual.”
At the end of another half-hour Miss Pomeroy opened and shut a window in her room with vigor, and when she stepped across the hall to Polly’s room, the little girl was putting on her shoes.
“Well, well,” said Miss Pomeroy, “you’ve had a nice, long nap. You shall take one every day, my dear, if you like; I’ve no doubt it will do you good.”
“Yes’m,” said Polly meekly, with a faint little smile.
“I don’t know as I shall let you sleep quite so long, always,” said Miss Hetty, briskly, “for fear you won’t rest so well at night: but we’ll see.”
“Yes’m,” said Polly again; and Miss Pomeroy never suspected that those two hours on the bed had seemed like weeks to her little guest.
CHAPTER VII
THE FIRST MORNING
POLLY slept soundly that night in her little white bed, and woke to see the sun peeping in at her between the snowy curtains of her east window.
“Dear me!” cried Polly. “I ought to be downstairs helping Mrs. Manser this very minute!” Then she clapped her little hands over her mouth and lay very still, remembering where she was, and that Mrs. Manser and all her old friends were nearly seven miles away, on Maple Hill.
“I believe I’d better not think about them just now,” said Polly, winking fast, as she got out of bed. “Someway it makes me feel as if I wanted to swallow every minute. Maybe I can do something for Miss Arctura Green if I hurry and get dressed.”
But when she stole softly downstairs, wearing the old red frock covered with one of her new white aprons, Polly stopped for a minute to look up at the tall clock. Near the clock was a high-backed chair, and as Polly heard Arctura’s voice and a strange one, she sat down in the chair to wait until Miss Green’s visitor departed. She was sitting there when Miss Pomeroy’s door opened, and down she came over the stairs.
“So you’re up before me, Mary,” said the mistress of the house as she held out her hand to the little girl. Polly took the kind hand and shook it vigorously up and down as she had seen grown people do. “For she doesn’t want to kiss me, of course,” thought Polly, wistfully, remembering Mrs. Ramsdell and dear Grandma Manser. “I expect grand people like her don’t kiss little girls much.”
“I thought,” said Polly, when the ceremony was over, “that maybe I could help Miss Arctura set the table for breakfast, but I heard her talking to somebody at the porch door, so I sat down here to wait.”
Just then the door into the hall from the library burst open and Arctura appeared with a much vexed expression on her flushed face.
“Morning, both,” she said, abruptly. “There, I knew you’d be down and waiting! ’Twas old Jane Hackett kep’ me; she’s come spying out the land already. I didn’t let her into the hall for fear she’d abide with us all day.”
“S—h, Arctura!” said Miss Pomeroy, gravely, though her lips seemed inclined to twitch a little. “How is Mrs. Hackett’s rheumatism to-day?”
“Thinks there’s a spell coming on, I believe,” said Arctura, looking rather crestfallen. “Breakfast’s ready, all but the griddle-cakes; I can’t sit down with you, for I’ve got them to fry.”
After breakfast, Miss Pomeroy sent Polly out on the broad piazza that ran across the front of the house and the west side, to play with the kittens.
“I have some plans to talk over with Arctura,” said she, “and then I want a little talk with you before I start my letter-writing. Don’t step off the piazza, for the grass is very wet. It rained in the night, and I don’t wish my guest to take cold,” said Miss Pomeroy, with her pleasant smile.
“I presume,” said Polly to Snip and Snap, as she dangled a string alluringly just above their reach, and watched their wild jumps into the air, “Miss Pomeroy is going to speak to me about my top apron button not being buttoned; but I didn’t forget it till she came down. I was going to ask Miss Arctura Green to fasten it for me. Probably Eleanor had long arms that could reach; I expect she did. Don’t you catch the bottom of this dress, mister,” said Polly, uplifting a warning finger at Snap, whose attitude certainly justified firm, quick measures, “for it’s just as tender!”
Meanwhile Miss Pomeroy and Arctura were having another consultation in the kitchen.
“I don’t know just what to plan about little Mary,” said Miss Hetty, doubtfully. “You see, I want to find out what she likes best to do, so that I can tell what kind of a child she is. I want her to act her own nature, but, of course, I must suggest things and ask some questions, for she’s very shy.”
“M—m,” said Arctura, thoughtfully, “she handles her knife and fork real pretty. I noticed it as I was in and out the two meals, yesterday and to-day. You’d know she come of good folks, and I must say that Manser woman’s brought her up well, though she’s a hatchet-faced piece, if ever I saw one, and given to nagging, if I’m any judge. Supposing you should ride off to the village without Mary this morning and let me visit with her a little mite. She’s full as used to kitchens as she is to parlors, I expect.”
“I believe that would be an excellent idea,” said Miss Pomeroy. “Arctura, you are a very sensible woman.”
“Sho!” said Arctura but she turned quickly to the sink to hide a smile of gratification.
“Now, Mary, you and I will have our little talk,” said Miss Pomeroy, a few minutes later, and then to Polly’s great amazement, she sat down in one of the big piazza chairs, and drew the child into her lap.
“I didn’t mean to forget that top-button,” said Polly, bravely, “but you came downstairs sooner than I expected, and I can’t quite reach it, so I was going to ask Miss Arctura to fasten it for me. I’m sorry I was an untidy girl; ’tisn’t Mrs. Manser’s fault; she spoke to me and spoke to me about my careless habits.”
“I’ve no doubt she did,” said Miss Hetty, dryly; “I presume she’d speak to me about my placket-hook that’s generally undone.” As she said this she buttoned Polly’s apron and gave her a pat which warmed the little girl’s heart; and then Miss Hetty held her in such a way that Polly could not see the kind, grave face.
“Now, my dear,” she said, slowly, “I suppose Mrs. Manser may have told you that I had a little niece of whom you remind me.” Polly nodded her head, and scarcely breathed. “I asked Mrs. Manser to let me have you for at least a month,” said Miss Pomeroy, unsteadily, “to see—to see if perhaps we might decide to be together as long as I live, my dear. If you are as like my little Eleanor as I think you may be, in many ways,” said Miss Hetty, after a pause during which Polly sat very still, “I shall not be able to let you go, I am sure. I’m growing old, Mary, and I need somebody to help me forget it. Eleanor would have done it, I know, though I had not seen her often enough for her to care a great deal about me, I’m—”
Polly turned quickly around as the voice faltered and stopped. She laid her soft cheek against Miss Pomeroy’s with a little cry of sympathy.
“I will be just as like Eleanor as ever I can,” said Polly, earnestly, “and I will love you every minute, and try to do everything you want.”
“I want you to have a good time,” said Miss Pomeroy, patting the brown curls. “We are old-fashioned people here, and you may find it very dull and quiet, my dear.”
“I shall like it very, very much,” said Polly, stoutly, and to herself she said, “There! you can help Miss Pomeroy as well as the poor-farm folks, Polly Prentiss, and if you didn’t do it, you’d be as selfish as old Redtop!” Redtop was a rooster, resident at Manser farm, whose greed and ugliness were by-words in the place of his abode.
“Now I must go to my letter-writing,” said Miss Pomeroy, briskly, after a few moments’ silence. She had stroked Polly’s curls, with a far-away expression, and then had given her a sudden kiss and set her down on the piazza floor. “I’m obliged to do a good many errands to-day, and I think perhaps I’d better not take you, though I should, generally. Suppose you run out to the kitchen and see if you can help Arctura in any way.”
CHAPTER VIII
A LITTLE COOK
HALF an hour later, anyone who looked in at the windows of the Pomeroy kitchen would have seen a pretty sight. Polly, mounted on a stool, was beating a golden mixture in a white bowl, and Arctura, at the opposite end of the long table, was stirring whites of eggs carefully into a white batter in a yellow bowl.
POLLY WAS BEATING A GOLDEN MIXTURE IN A BIG WHITE BOWL
“This is what I call solid comfort,” said Arctura, gayly. “I don’t know when I’ve had such a helper as you are! Miss Hetty’s without the gift when it comes to cooking. You wouldn’t believe it, but she’d be just as likely to put the eggs right in after the butter, without beating ’em separate, as any other way. Ain’t it singular?”
“I expect she writes beautiful letters, Miss Arctura,” said Polly, loyally evading the discussion of Miss Pomeroy’s weak point.
“My, I guess she does!” said Arctura, heartily. “That’s it; we’ve all got different talents. Hiram says he’d full as soon see me with a pistol pointed at him as with a pen in my hand. The only way I ever wrote a letter was by main strength, and I’d rather take a whipping any time.”
“I guess it would be pretty hard work for anybody to whip you,” said Polly, shrewdly, and Arctura laughed with much relish.
“’Twould now-a-days,” she said, as she gave the final stir to her batter, “but I’ve been whipped in my time. I didn’t get my growth all at once, you see. Is your cake ready for the pans? You wait till I show you the cunning little brush I’m going to butter the tins with. I’ll let you do yours next time, after I’ve once showed you how. You can’t slight the edges or any spot, if you want the cakes to slip out right.”
When the heat of the oven had been tested and the little round tins had been put in and the oven doors shut on them, Arctura selected a stout testing straw from a pile on a high shelf above the kitchen sink and seated herself, holding the straw erect in her hand like a tiny weapon.
“I always take this time for a breathing spell,” she announced, motioning Polly to another chair, “for if I start in on a fresh job, those cakes more’n likely’ll get burned; it only takes twenty-five minutes to bake ’em to the queen’s taste.”
“Yes’m,” said Polly; then she looked eagerly over at Arctura. “Did you ever see little Eleanor?” she asked, breathlessly.
“No, never,” said Arctura, and Polly felt a throb of disappointment. “You see, Square Pomeroy didn’t depart this life till a year ago last December, and he was kind of queer,” Arctura tapped her forehead significantly, “the last few years, and ’twasn’t a cheerful place to bring a child. And he’d hardly let his daughter out of his sight. About once in six months I’d send her off to Shelby to see the twins for two or three days, but I was always put to it to keep the Square satisfied till she got back.”
“Was he cross?” asked Polly.
“Not to say cross,” replied Arctura, slowly, “but terrible decided and unreasonable. Miss Hetty’s had her trials, and so’ve I; money isn’t all.”
“No’m,” said Polly, soberly, “but it does a great many things, Miss Arctura. Did you know how poor this town is? Manser farm leaks in places, and the paint is all gone, and the ceilings drop sometimes, pieces of them, I mean. But the town is too poor to help fix any of those things. Uncle Sam Blodgett and Father Manser would shingle the roof quick enough, though they aren’t as spry as once they were, if only they could set eyes on the shingles,” said Polly, quoting freely from her old friends.
“It’s a stingy town, I’m afraid,” said Arctura, shaking her head. “The Square was the most liberal man in it, and Miss Hetty follows right on, but most of the purse strings are drawn pretty close. Sometime I’ll tell you a little story about the Square and me when I was your age; you remind me to relate it to you. We haven’t got time now,” she said, glancing at the clock, “for those cakes have got to come out in a minute, and then I’ll have to fly around; dinner time always gains on me, someway.”
“Do you know anything special I could do to please Miss Pomeroy?” asked Polly, wistfully. “She’s being so good to me.”
“Let’s see,” said Arctura, meditatively. “Why, of course, she wants you to enjoy yourself. I expect she’d be pleased to see you take notice of things like the old shells and so on, and there’s the books; Bobby admired to read, and she always said Eleanor was quite a hand for stories, too. And you could go to walk with her, pleasant days, same as Bobby did last winter. And she’d be glad to see you relish your food.”
“Oh, I do, Miss Arctura,” cried Polly. “I do, every single bite I take!”
“Well now, that’s good news,” said Miss Green, comfortably. “I can’t think of anything else; you do all right so far as I know. I wouldn’t worry, but just do my best every day as things come along. Now we’ll take a look at those cakes.”
“She didn’t say a word about playing or running round,” thought Polly, as Arctura rose to open the oven doors; “of course, she thinks I’m too big now for those things, just as Mrs. Manser said. There’s a girl in the village that’s most twelve, and she plays with a dolly, for I’ve seen her. But she belonged to somebody, and that’s different, I guess, from when you’re going to be adopted.”
Polly’s lips seemed inclined to quiver for a moment, but then her cakes—the dozen golden brown cakes—were lifted from the oven and set on the table, and in the rush of delight, at seeing the delicate tops puffed up above the edges of the tins, the quiver changed to a smile.
“Arctura says you are a born cook,” said Miss Pomeroy at dinner time, “and she has requested the pleasure of your company tomorrow morning when she makes the pies.”
Polly dimpled with pleasure; she was eating steadily, just as much as she could. Miss Pomeroy noticed her increased appetite with agreeable surprise.
“Miss Arctura was very, very kind to me,” said the little girl, sedately, “and I had a beautiful time, and Miss Arctura said if the minister—the supply minister, that’s nothing more or less than a bashful boy, according to her ideas—came to dinner Sunday, she should set four of my cakes along with four of hers on the table for dessert with the pudding.”
Miss Pomeroy suppressed an inclination to laugh, and told Polly she had understood from Arctura that the cakes were a great success.
“But the minister is not a boy, my dear,” she added; “you must not always take what Arctura says word for word. She used to call me her little girl until I was more than thirty years old.”
Then Miss Pomeroy and Polly had a laugh together, though Polly could not help feeling that Arctura was very brave indeed ever to have called the tall mistress of Pomeroy Oaks her little girl.
After dinner came the two naps, or at least Miss Pomeroy’s nap and Polly’s hour on the bed. Yesterday’s experience had taught Polly that an hour’s nap would be considered enough for her, so at the end of that time she got off the bed softly, and after making herself tidy for the rest of the day, she stole softly downstairs. It was a mild afternoon, and the big front door had been half opened so that the spring air might blow through the screen.
“Of course, if she asks me if I’ve been asleep, I shall have to say no,” said Polly, looking a little bit troubled as she stood at the door, “but I don’t believe she will ask me. Of course, big girls that want to be adopted can learn to go to sleep in the day-time, just as grand grown-up folks do, and I shall learn as soon as ever I can.”
Polly stepped out on the piazza and walked softly up and down, sniffing the air, and thinking how little fear she would have had of the damp ground if she could have run out barefoot as she did so often at Manser farm: and she gave a little sigh as she looked down at the shiny shoes Miss Pomeroy had brought home for her that morning. But Snip and Snap came racing up on the piazza from somewhere, ready for a frolic, and Polly did not disappoint them.
Arctura appeared on the kitchen porch, collecting the milk pans that had been sunning all day, and snapped her fingers to attract Polly’s attention.
“Look here,” she called, “my brother, Hiram, is feeling real neglected because you haven’t been nigh the barn since you came. Can’t you step out and visit with him for a spell now? I’ll call you whenever Miss Hetty wants you.”
Polly needed no second invitation. She was ready to go wherever anyone wished, but, above all things, she had longed to see the barn, with Daisy in it; and Hiram reminded her in some way of Uncle Sam Blodgett, though she could not have told just how. Certainly the two men did not look alike, for Uncle Blodgett was lean and wiry, with a long, thin, nervous face, while Hiram was stout and ruddy, and never in a hurry about anything.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
Wood-Folk Talk
By J. ALLISON ATWOOD