Mrs. Pennington nestled almost like a child in those clinging young arms.
“Polly, you have no respect for me,” she said, and although she spoke in her usual tone, Polly detected a difference. It was perhaps due to the train of thought that Winifred’s chance words had awakened in the girl’s mind that she heard that faint difference in her mother’s voice.
“Mums!” she said, wistfully, “may I come and help you dress? You are going out, I know.”
“I can manage by myself, Polly, and you have a lot of work to do in the conservatory, my pet. Chrissie and I are going to her dressmaker; she has to have some new frocks, as she is going to spend Christmas with Sir Mark and his mother.”
Polly gave vent to a deep exclamation of disappointment.
“Oh! mother,” she said, “I thought Chrissie would be sure to be with us this Christmas; it is the last she will spend with us in a proper way,” she finished, quaintly.
She would have said more, but something urged her not to press the matter to-day.
She picked up her watering can and went slowly to the conservatory.
Winifred had left her scales for her exercises, and Polly stopped to listen. She and Winifred played the same exercises, but Polly played them differently.
“Why do people grow up and get married?” she asked herself. “Chrissie belongs to us and yet that nasty Mark Wentworth comes and steals her away. I hate him! I think he might have let her be with us for Christmas. I am sure dear little mother feels it awfully, but she is such a sweet thing she never complains. She looks very tired to-day,” Polly mused on, as she drew a very large pair of gardening gloves over her hands and prepared to do her duty among the plants.