“Rather neat,” said Polly to herself, 169 “rather neat! Now if he were to send it with two bunches of roses of six each, I think it could not fail to make an impression. I should rather hate to pay another person to make love for me, though,” she went on, with a little toss of the head; and then she picked up her work and began again to “rhyme buttonholes.”
When Dan came home to supper he had much to learn. He was lost in wonder over the rhyme which Polly repeated to him, but still more impressed by the four great silver dollars she had to show; for her impatient customer had already called for the verses.
“Jiminy!” cried Dan; “that’s most a week’s earnings for some of us!”
“Yes,” Polly replied, demurely; “that’s what Mrs. O’Toole would have paid me for sixteen baby-dresses. Things even themselves out in the long run, don’t they, Dan?” As though Polly knew anything about the long run, by the way!
Before Christmas Polly was driving a pretty trade, not only in ideas but in 170 sewing. She had in all ten dozen pocket handkerchiefs to mark for Christmas customers, besides towels and table-linen, sheets and pillow-cases. People had found her out, and she had to refuse more than one good order for lack of time. But needlework alone, quick as she was in doing it, would have given her but a meagre income, had she not been able to furnish “also ideas.”
One lady, for instance, came to ask her for an “idea” for a Thanksgiving dinner, and Polly not only suggested the idea, but carried it out for her. She went about with a big basket to all the markets and collected perfect specimens of vegetables with which to make a centrepiece for the dinner table. The dinner was given in a house where the round dining table would seat twenty-four guests. In this ample centre she erected a pyramid of fruits of the earth. There were crimson beets, pale yellow squashes, scarlet tomatoes, and the long, thin fingers of the string-bean; potatoes furnished a comfortable brown, which, together with the soft 171 bronze of the onion, harmonized discordant colours; and, crowning all, the silken tassel of the red-eared corn raised its graceful crest.
The hostess was delighted with her table, and more delighted still with the pretty decorator. Polly’s fame flew from one to another throughout that kindly and prosperous community, and she found herself accumulating a goodly hoard. As Christmas drew near, many a perplexed shopper came to her for “ideas,” and all went away content. She had long since discovered that the Colorado shops were treasure-houses of pretty things. She never passed a jeweller’s window without taking note of his latest novelties; she kept an eye upon Mexican and Indian bazaars, and Chinese bric-à-brac collections; she made a study of Colorado gems, and knew where the prizes lay hidden; she ran through the books in the bookstores; she was alert for new inventions in harness decoration and bridle trimmings; she gave hints for fancy-work of divers kinds. 172
Mercury, meanwhile, sped about the town, dispensing healing, as Polly often reminded him, and “getting more than I dispense, Polly,” he would declare in return. “I feel so well that everything is a regular lark!”
And so Dan made a “lark” of his work, and trotted all day in his capacity of Mercury, little dreaming of the wealth that was accumulating for his use; while Polly went on with her hoarding, of which she made a great secret, and thought of a still better time coming.