Polly gave the down-town east-side street and number and then reached out for her basket. She felt that she could not spare any more time to her personal affairs in business hours, even for such an elegant customer as this.
“Well, Polly, I’m very glad to have met you,” said Miss Cicely, “and I hope we shall see each other again. Here is a bright, new fifty-cent piece for you. Won’t you take it, please, and buy yourself something with it—whatever you like best.”
It gave Miss Cissy a thrill to see Polly’s face as she took the bit of shining silver; all in a flash it changed from the face of a little careworn woman to that of a dimpled child.
“I’ll get sister a book,” she cried happily. “I thank you ever so much!”
“Why, she’s actually pretty,” thought Miss Cissy and she pictured to herself Cash one-hundred-and-five clad in a neat white frock, with hair cut square round her neck and tied with crisp ribbon-bows over her temples. “She’ll do. Most certainly she’ll do. Now, if I can only get her!” she thought.
She was so entertained by her visions of the imagined Polly that it did not seem a second before the actual one had returned with her bundle and change. Miss Cissy took them from the salesman and, with a twinkle in her eyes, thanked him for helping her to find just the article she wanted. Then she hurried out into the street where her carriage was awaiting her.
It was a long, rough ride over the uneven stones of the down-town streets, but Miss Cissy did not care for little inconveniences. She was too full of hope to mind the jolts and jars that made the coachman grind his teeth. She readily found the tenement in which “big sister” lived and she had no trouble in finding “big sister” herself. The big sister who, by the way, was not, as it happened, big at all, but quite little, in fact, heard Miss Cissy out very patiently. She seemed used to listening to a great deal of talk and to seeing a great many strange, fine ladies, and to not allowing herself to be bewildered by their promises or them. She was extremely quiet and gave no sign of either pleasure or surprise as the splendid plans for Polly’s welfare were unfolded to her. How was she to know that this fine lady was in earnest and would prove as good as her word?
When Miss Cissy had quite finished she said slowly:
“It is very kind of you to offer to help us. It would be a grand thing for me, of course, to go to a hospital and be treated right, and I think your little cousin would like Polly, but—it would be very bad for Polly if, after she had had a taste of easy living, she’d have to go back to the cash-running again and—this,” pointing to the poor room. “I don’t think I’d better risk it for her, miss. Polly is a cheerful little soul, but you can’t tell, it might make her discontented later.”
But Miss Cicely was not one to be easily discouraged. She reassured and she explained, she argued and she urged.