Polly laughed. "I shall surely come! I should like to learn how to stand on my head—I never could seem to get the trick of it."
"I didn't say I'd do it!" twinkled Miss Twining; "but I declare, I believe I would try, if that would get you in here!"
"Never you fear!" cried Polly. "You'll see me so much, now I know you want me, you won't get time for anything!"
"I'll risk it." Miss Twining nodded with emphasis.
"I've wondered sometimes," Polly went on, "what I would do if I had to stay alone as much as some folks do—the ladies here, for instance. Of course you can visit each other."
"Yes, except in the hours when it is forbidden."
"Strange, they won't let you go to see each other in the evening."
"I think it is because the ladies used to stay upstairs visiting instead of going down to hear Mrs. Nobbs read. Not all of them are educated up to science and history and such things."
"I should think they would have some good books in the library, story books. Such a dry-looking lot I never saw!"
Miss Twining smiled. "They say that one night when Mrs. Nobbs was reading 'History of the Middle Ages,' she went into the parlor to find only two listeners, and right after that the rule was made forbidding them to go to each other's rooms."