"I don't know. He might. I lay awake last night thinking about it."
"You shouldn't have stayed awake a minute," laughed Polly. "I wouldn't wonder if you'd hear from him this afternoon. Then you'll stop worrying."
Miss Twining laughed a little, too. "I'm glad I sent it anyway," she said. "It has given me something to think of and something to hope for. The days are pretty monotonous here—oh, it is so nice to have you come running in! You don't know how much good you do me!"
"Do I? I guess it's because I'm such a chatterbox! There! I haven't told you what father and mother said about your book! Father took it and read and read and read. Finally he looked up and asked, 'Did you say a lady at the Home wrote these?' Then he brought his head down, as he does when he is pleased, and exclaimed, 'They ought to be proud of her!'—just what I said, you know!"
"I am so glad he likes them!" Miss Twining's delicate face grew pink with pleasure.
"Oh, he does! He kept reading—it seemed as if he couldn't lay it down—till somebody called him. And when he got up he said, 'This is poetry—I should like to see the woman who can write like that. She must be worth knowing.'"
"Oh, Polly!" Miss Twining's eyes overflowed with happy tears. "That is the best compliment I ever had in my life—and from such a man as your father!"
"Mother fairly raves over the poems," went on Polly. "She says she is coming over here next visiting day to get acquainted with you."
"I hope she will come," smiled the little woman. "I have always wished I could know her, she looks so sweet as she sits there beside you in church."
"She is sweet!" nodded Polly. "Nobody knows how sweet till they've lived with her."