“Work for you to-morrow, Minervy,” he said as he set down the basket.
“That’s so,” returned Minerva. “Well, I don’t mind. Them white peaches makes fine preserves and we haven’t any too many peaches put up this year. Hungry, Sam?”
“You bet,” he replied. “Always am. Seems to me I don’t more’n get one meal down than I’m ready for another.”
“It ain’t quite as bad as that,” returned Minerva. “I’ll have your supper ready in the shake of a sheep’s tail. By the time you’ve done milking, anyway.”
Sam went out with the milk-buckets and Jessie returned to the sitting-room. Her father was at his desk, setting down some accounts; her mother was watering the plants which had lately been brought in and put in the south windows. Jessie stood looking out into the gathering twilight. Everything showed forth duskily. Many of the trees were shedding their leaves. Down by the brook a row of willows looked fantastically like people with big heads and wild hair, Jessie thought. There was one quite small, which seemed very human. Jessie regarded it interestedly for some time before she turned and said, “Mother, what is the little tree down by the brook? the one with a funny head. What’s its name?”
“Pollard Willow,” replied her mother, glancing out of the window toward the place Jessie pointed out.
“Polly Willow,” whispered Jessie to herself. “Polly Willow! What a funny name.”
CHAPTER II
Playmate Polly
CHAPTER II
Playmate Polly
It was some time after this that Jessie made the acquaintance of Polly Willow and it came about in a way that Jessie had not expected. It was due in the beginning to 589 which seemed of late to be getting into a habit of tardiness. One morning when Jessie was going to school she missed her good friend Ezra at the door of his little house. A stranger was there, a gruff sort of somebody who cried out sharply: “Get over there quick, sissy. You ain’t no business crossing tracks when trains is coming.”