When Polly Was Eighteen

by Emma C. Dowd

It was an excited little company that was grouped on the grass against a background of shrubbery. Wheel-chairs and small chairs were carried out and moved from place to place, in order to obtain the best effect. At last everybody was ready, with his very best smile or his most happy expression, according to whether he was grown up or only five or ten or anywhere between. The little folks were told to keep perfectly still, the photographer waited the fraction of a minute for the sun to hide his face under the edge of a white cloud, and then—click!—the picture was taken.

What a Babel of tongues was set loose as soon as the word of release was given! The children all talked at once, and the grown-ups smiled to one another and hoped that “it” was good.

After a long week the finished photographs came, and the children promptly went into a flutter of ecstasy and did not come out until the next morning. Then before they were dressed they had to take two rapt glances at “the picture,” the first to make sure that it had not grown wings overnight, and then to see if it were really as beautiful as it had been when they went to bed.

It was a fine photograph; even the grown-ups admitted that. Everybody was in it, from Benedicta Clapperton down to Baby Zulette. The little folks had obeyed to the letter all the warnings to be motionless, and the result was a perfect likeness of every small face. As for the others, they agreed that all excepting his own were as good as such pictures could well be; so everybody was satisfied—including the photographer himself.

“If I only had three,” wished Dolly Merrifield to Polly, “then I could send one to Sardis and one to auntie and keep one myself.”

Polly said she thought it could be arranged with only one, for it could be sent first to Aunt Sophie and then she could send it to Sardis, and after he had looked at it long enough he could return it to her.

Dolly was delighted with this plan, and before many days it was put into action. Aunt Sophie wrote a very happy letter, telling how glad she was to see the photograph and that she had already sent it to Sardis. Then Dolly tried to calculate how many days must go by before it would return from her brother. She could not tell, but finally decided that she should have to wait at least a week.

“I know he’ll like it,” she told Polly, “only I do want to hear what he says—he never says things like other folks.”

The letter from Sardis came in exactly five days, and Dolly’s eyes grew big and bright as it was put into her small hand. As she read, the smiles grew, until there was a joyous little laugh. She looked up to meet Polly’s happy eyes.