I gave the promise; and, without answering my questions as to what she was going to do, she sped off towards the house. In about five minutes she returned with something held in the skirt of her frock, which seemed greatly to incommode her in climbing. At last she reached the pulpit, but she did not stay there. Up and on she went, much hindered by her burden.
"Polly! Polly!" I cried. "You mustn't go higher than the pulpit. You know it isn't fair. The pulpit is the top one, and you must stay there. The clergyman never goes into the gallery."
"I'm not going into the gallery," she gasped; and on she went to the topmost of the large branches. There she paused, and from her lap she drew forth the dinner-bell.
"I'm in the belfry," she shouted in tones of triumph, "and I'm going to ring the bell for service."
Which she accordingly did, with such a hearty goodwill that Nurse Bundle and several others of the household came out to see what was the matter. My father laughed loudly, but Mrs. Bundle was seriously displeased.
"Master Reginald would never have thought of no such thing on a Sunday afternoon but for you, Miss Polly," she said, with a partiality for her "own boy" which offended my sense of justice.
"I climbed a tree too, Nurse," I said, emphatically.
"And it was only a Sunday kind of climbing," Polly pleaded. But Nurse Bundle refused to see the force of Polly's idea; we were ignominiously dismissed to the nursery, and thenceforward were obliged, as before, to confine our tree-climbing exploits to the six working days of the week.
And these Portugal laurels bore the names of the Pulpit and the Pew ever afterwards.