"Don't you know policemen never do anything to good people. They don't do anything to bad people either but arrest them and then the judge decides what is to be done to them. The policemen are really good, kind men, as a rule."
"I believe Cousin Dink was lying, anyhow," declared Polly stoutly. "How could a policeman get our mother if our mother was already dead? I wish I knew whether our mother was dead or not. I believe she must be or she would not let us be traveling around with Cousin Dink, eating cream puffs and pickles for breakfast. Mother was powerful particular about what we ate for breakfast."
"I can find out whether or not your mother is dead if you will only tell me what your name is and where you lived before you were taken off by Cousin Dink," said Josie.
"You are sure they won't get me if I tell," whispered Polly. "Cousin Dink told me I must tell everybody that my mother and father were dead and that I loved her like a sister or aunt. She didn't want to be old enough to be a mother. She said I must forget where I lived before she carried us off. Sometimes I do almost forget it because it seems so long ago."
"You got as far as the time your mother cried all the time," suggested Josie. "What happened then?"
"Uncle Chester came back to Atlanta and said she must go to a hospital and he wouldn't let any of her friends see her. He wouldn't let us see her, either."
"And who is Uncle Chester? Is he your mother's brother or your father's?" asked Josie, making a mental note of the little girl's slip concerning Atlanta.
"Oh, he isn't either, at least, not a really and truly brother. He always called our father Brother Stephen, but his name is Chester Hunt and father's name was Stephen Waller."
"You say your father's name was Stephen Waller. Do you think he is dead?"
"I think so sometimes and sometimes I don't. I don't know what to think. If he is alive why didn't he come back to Mother and if he is dead why didn't Mother know it for sure? When the war got over we thought he was coming home and Mother stopped crying and soldiers kept on coming back and Daddy wasn't with them. And she wrote letters to the President and everybody and nobody seemed to be able to tell her much of anything about Daddy. One time after a big fight he was missing and still some of the men in his regiment say they saw him alive but they don't seem to know just where. And it was all so mixed up and Mother got awful sick and then Uncle Chester came."