"Perhaps I have," said Polly meekly.
Regardless of soot and ashes, she pulled the wood out on the rug, and began again. This time she arranged it cris-crossing as regularly as the walls of a log-house, and, having exhausted her supply of shavings, she lighted a newspaper and thrust it into the middle opening. The girls watched it with eager eyes. It blazed up like the shavings and, like them, burned out, leaving only the blackened cinders, with here and there a line of red, to show where an edge had been. This was discouraging; the room was uncomfortably cool, and they were wasting their entire evening in preparing for their talk.
"The third time conquers," said Molly, laughing, as she saw Polly tearing down her log cabin. "What are you going to do next, Poll?"
"Lay it yourself, if you want to," retorted Polly, showing more heat than the fire had done.
"I never did such a thing in my life," Molly assured her. "Can't
Mary do it?"
"I don't know," said Polly, dropping back from her knees until she sat on her heels; "anyway, she's so cross I don't dare ask her."
"What makes your mother keep her if she's so cross?" inquired Molly, leaning forward to blow the last spark which still lingered on the newspaper.
"Because she can't get anything else," answered Polly, unconsciously touching the key-note of the whole servant question.
"Well," remarked Molly, after a pause, while Polly again wrestled with the fire, "we shall catch our deaths of cold here, Polly; we may as well go to bed, for this isn't going to burn to-night."
"I'm sorry, Molly," her hostess said penitently, as they went up- stairs after leaving a note on the table addressed to the doctor, and containing the simple but alarming statement: "Good night; we've gone to bed to keep from freezing."