The door opened, swung wide upon its hinges and there, on the threshold, stood Miss Cissy clasping a little stranger-girl by the hand. Hannah gave a quick exclamation and Priscilla raised her eyes. The next moment she was in Miss Cissy’s arms.
The little stranger-girl stood by and smiled, while Simple Simon and Miss Muffet, in the wall-paper, quite grinned at each other with satisfaction. It seemed to Polly as if she had stepped right into the middle of a fairy-tale, for surely never was there so wonderful a place as this outside of fairy-land, nor a little princess who was half so fine and delicate.
Miss Cissy beckoned her to come forward saying gaily:
“See, Priscilla, I have brought you a visitor. This is Polly Carter. Won’t you shake hands with her, dear?”
Priscilla shyly put out a frail, soft little hand which Polly grasped in her thin, little chapped one.
“Polly is going to stay all night,” went on Miss Cicely, “and if she has a good time and enjoys herself, and if you get on nicely and like each other, she won’t go home for a while. They will put up a bed for her in your room, right across the way from yours and you can chatter to each other in the morning and be as jolly as you like. Just think what fun it’s going to be, Priscilla! Why, you can have breakfast-parties and dinner-parties and tea-parties together every day at your little table, all by yourselves, and you can show Polly your toys and she can show you new ways of playing with them, and you can keep house and visit and have—oh! lots of good times! And perhaps, if I’m very good, you’ll let me come and join in the sport sometimes, for I think I like your kind of play better than the sort they have down-stairs—I mean, the grown-up people. I wouldn’t tell anybody but you, of course, but it’s sometimes a little—just a little dull down there. But up here! dear me! why there’s no end to the sport you can have up here, if you want to. I don’t believe Polly ever saw anything so funny in all her life as your walking-doll was the other night, Priscilla, when you dropped her on the floor and she lay there on her back, sawing the air with her arms, and kicking.”
Priscilla smiled demurely and drew herself from Miss Cissy’s arm. “I’ll get her now,” she volunteered in a timid whisper. “If you wind her up and put her on the floor she’ll do it again.”
How Polly did laugh to see the fine French lady in such an awkward predicament and seeming to be so indignant about it! Her merry giggle was so irresistible that Priscilla, after a moment, joined in with a soft little chuckle on her own account. Then a music-box was brought out and the Parisian Mademoiselle was set upon her feet and made to walk to its tune. It appeared she could not keep step at all, though at first she flew about very fast trying to do so, but by and by she got discouraged and walked slower and slower, until, at last, she collapsed entirely and fell on the floor with a final wriggle of despair, as if she gave it up as a bad job. Polly’s giggle broke into a laughing shout at this and James, coming in with a huge tray in his arms, almost stumbled over in amazement at the unaccustomed sight and sound of such merriment in the usually quiet nursery.
Priscilla discovered that supper was a very different affair when one did not have to sit and eat it alone. When Hannah served her and Polly to the bread and butter they bit into their slices and compared the impressions made by their teeth. Polly’s arch was wide and shallow with a little uneven place in the centre where one of her front teeth lapped a trifle, and Priscilla’s was narrower but quite exact all around. By biting carefully on one side and another of this first shape they found they could make different figures, new patterns being disclosed by each nibble, a fact which was so amusing that though Priscilla had not been hungry and Polly had thought she had had as much as she could possibly eat down-stairs, they managed to dispose of several slices before they were aware. Hannah shook her head at such “bad table-manners” but Miss Cissy would not have the children disturbed “just for once.” They sipped their creamy milk and ate their fruit and, what she said she used to call “good-for-you pudding” when she was a little girl, with as much relish as if neither of them had tasted a mouthful since morning, and by the end of the meal Polly had told Priscilla about sister and Priscilla had confided to Polly that she did not like to have her hair combed “’cause it pulled so and hurt most aw’fly.”