‘A rabbit, I think,’ she began slowly.
Then suddenly she spun round on the tips of her toes.
‘I have thought of something, Aunt Mary!’ cried Patty, smiling a wise little smile. ‘I have thought of something so nice. Could you sew Polly’s name on her pockets—Polly on one pocket and Perkins on the other? Could you do that, Aunt Mary, do you think?’
Yes, Aunt Mary thought that she could.
‘Here is some green thread in Grandmother’s basket,’ said she. ‘It will be pretty if I embroider her name in green on the pink dress, don’t you think?’
Patty thought it would be beautiful, and said so. She stood close beside Aunt Mary and watched her take the first stitches in Polly Perkins’s name.
Just at that moment who should drive up to the house but the expressman come for Grandmother’s trunk hours before he had been expected. And then such a hurry and bustle to crowd the last odds and ends into the trunk and to lock it and to strap it, all in the twinkling of an eye.
But at last it was done, and away went the trunk, bumping down the porch steps on the expressman’s back, bumping into the wagon, and bumping off down the road, round the corner, and out of sight.
And then, and not until then, it was discovered that Polly Perkins, pockets and all, had been left behind. There she lay in Aunt Mary’s chair where she had been tossed when the expressman came.
‘Now I can carry her home myself to-morrow,’ said Patty, delighted with this turn of affairs. ‘I can carry her all the way in my arms, can’t I, Grandmother? Do say that I may!’