Barbara hesitated, looking from one to the other.
“Please!” coaxed Polly.
“Yes,” she finally admitted, “they come in it. But I not tell more.” She shut her lips tightly.
Tilly, the cook, slipped outside, and after a while returned with the word that the girls could go where they chose. They were quick to use the permission; but, as Polly surmised, the little car was gone.
Mrs. Jocelyn only smiled unsatisfactory answers to their eager questions, and they wondered much what it all could mean.
Soon after tea Polly was sent home in the coach, with a box of eleven long-stemmed superb pink roses, a birthday present from Leonora. She ran into the living-room to show them to her father and mother, but stopped just inside the threshold, staring at the corner where a low bookcase had stood. There, shining with newness, she saw a handsome upright piano.
“Why, father,” she cried, “what made you do it? You said you couldn’t afford one just yet, and I could have waited as well as not!”
Dr. Dudley smiled down into her eager face.
“I didn’t,” he answered. “We were as much surprised as you are. Read that!” pointing to a card tilted against the music rack.
She snatched the bit of white.