Polly looked at it for a long time, without a word. Then she turned, appealingly, to Mrs. Baird.
"What can I say?" she asked. "I can't think of anything but 'thank you.' And that's so little. Though if I could only be sure you knew how much I meant by it, it would be enough. Do say you know," she pleaded, looking around the table, "because I'm terribly embarrassed," she ended, laughing.
"Very good speech, Poll," Betty teased from her seat opposite, "and quite long enough; my soup's cold."
"Betty!" Mrs. Baird tried to look shocked, and failed, because she simply had to smile.
Then followed the happiest meal imaginable. At the end a big cake, with Polly's name on it, was brought in, and then everybody told her all over again how brave she'd been.
"But I wasn't," she insisted. "It was just a simple thing to do—nothing that really took courage."
"You may be right," Betty told her, "but you'll never find any one to agree with you."
Polly smiled. "If I do," she said, "will you promise never to mention it to me again?"
"Yes," Betty said, promptly; "I will."
"All right."