There was a pause, broken at last by a mutinous "I don't think so, mother."
"Why, Jennie!"
"Well, I don't. She may be kind, but she isn't—thoughtful."
"Why, my daughter!" remonstrated the shocked mother again. "I 'm ashamed of you!"
"I know; it's awful, of course, but I can't help it," declared the girl. "If she really were thoughtful, she 'd think sometimes that we 'd like something for presents besides flannel things."
"But they're so—sensible, Jennie, for—us."
"That's just what they are—sensible," retorted the girl bitterly. "But who wants sensible things always? We have to have them the whole year through. Seems as if at Christmas we might have something—foolish."
"Jennie, Jennie, what are you saying? and when Cousin Margaret is so good to us, too! Besides, she does send us candy always, and—and that's foolish."
"It would be if 't was nice candy, the kind we can't hope ever to buy ourselves. But it isn't. It's the cheap Christmas candy, two pounds for a quarter, the kind we have to buy when we buy any. Mother, it's just that; don't you see? Cousin Margaret thinks that's the only sort of thing that's fit for us! cheap, sensible things, the kind of things we have to buy. But that does n't mean that we would n't like something else, or that we have n't any taste, just because we have n't the means to gratify it," finished the girl chokingly as she hurried out of the room before her mother could reply.
All this, however, Polly Ann did not hear, for Polly Ann was not a fly on Mary's sitting-room wall.