In truth, she had sat there hardly an hour, when she distinctly heard the occupant of a yellow buckboard read the sign, and then turn to her companion with a word of comment. Polly had always had an idea that one of those yellow buckboards would be the making of her fortune yet. The one in question was drawn by a pretty pair of ponies, and two young girls were in possession of it.
“I have an idea they’ll notice it again, when they come back this way,” Polly surmised. “But if they’re going up the cañon they won’t come back till just as I’m getting dinner.”
And, sure enough, the mutton stew was just beginning to simmer, when there came a rap at the door.
The front door opened directly into the little sitting-room, and was never closed in pleasant weather. As Polly emerged from the kitchen, her face very red from 162 hobnobbing with the stove, she found one of the girls of the yellow buckboard standing in the doorway.
“Good morning, Miss––”
“Fitch. My name is Polly Fitch.”
“What a jolly name!” the visitor exclaimed. “I think you must be the one with ideas.”
“Yes,” said Polly, “Do you want one? Come in and take a seat.”
“I do want an idea most dreadfully,” the young lady rejoined, taking the proffered chair. “I want something for a booby prize for a backgammon tournament. I don’t suppose anybody ever heard of a backgammon tournament before, but it’s going to be great fun. We are doing it to take the conceit out of a young man we know, who declares that there’s nothing in backgammon that he didn’t learn the first time he played it with his grandfather.”
“And you want a booby prize?” Polly looked thoughtful for the space of sixteen seconds. Then she cried; “Oh, I have an idea! Get somebody to whittle you a 163 couple of wooden dice; then paint them white and mark them with black sixes on each of the six sides of each die. You could call it ‘a booby pair-o’-dice’ if you don’t object to puns!”