“That’s ’cause it’s so fine and curly,” explained Polly. “Mine is straight and the tangles come out easy, but I’d rather have yours if I were you. Yours looks like fine silk—the kind ladies buy at the embroidery counter to do fancy-work with. Floss, that’s what they call it. Your hair is just like floss.”
Since Polly appeared to think it was nice to have hair like floss Priscilla felt it might be easier to bear the pulling of the comb. At any rate she made up her mind, then and there, that she would be “as brave as a soldier” after that and show Polly how she could bear pain without a whimper.
Miss Cicely stayed until the supper-table was cleared and the two Sweet P’s, as she called them, were contentedly cutting out paper dolls in the light of the lamp, and then she slipped quietly away down-stairs to join the rest of the family, who were going in to dinner.
Polly passed the evening in a sort of happy dream of delight. The warmth of the cheerful fire, its soft light and the pleasant coziness of the room, were so different from anything she had ever known before that she felt she would certainly wake up, in a minute or so and find it all vanished and herself back in the little room down-town, where the kerosene lamp gave out a sickening odor, and the fire in the stove couldn’t be kept burning after supper was prepared because coal was so high this winter. The wind came in through the chinks of the windows and door in chilling gusts, and even when one cuddled up in bed under the blankets and snuggled next to sister, one hardly got warmed through before morning. And then, to have to get up before it was light, and go shivering about in the dark, groping around blind with sleep, and have to hurry out into the icy, wintry streets to a weary day of cash-running at the store! She was so full of her own thoughts that her scissors had almost snipped the head off the splendid paper lady she was cutting out before she knew it, and Priscilla seeing the narrow escape, gave a little low exclamation of dismay.
“I guess you’re pretty tired, aren’t you?” Hannah asked kindly, coming and standing beside her chair and looking down at her benevolently. Polly nodded, but could not answer in words. The memory of the cold, bare little down-town room had awakened another memory: the memory of sister, and all at once her heart sickened of the warmth and comfort and light here and just turned hungrily to the poorer place where sister was, in longing to go back.
“Come, you two little ladies, it’s time for bed,” cried Hannah briskly. “Now, which one can get her clothes off first? I warrant I know.”
Poor little Priscilla tugged and wrenched in vain; she was not accustomed to do for herself, and Polly stood undressed and clad in her “nightie” before she even had her slippers untied. At sight of her disappointed little face Hannah caught her up in her arms and gave her a good hug, and the next moment all her buttons were unfastened as if by magic. It was an old story to Priscilla to sit before the fire wrapped in her downy bath-robe and have her hair brushed and braided for the night, while Hannah told her stories of kings and queens or repeated the exciting history of “The Little Schmall Rid Hin.” But to Polly it was a new and curious experience which made her forget for the moment the strange, sickening ache in her heart. She thrust her feet out toward the pleasant fire-glow and laughed approvingly when the fox, having planned to “git the little schmall rid hin” and carry her home in a bag to be “biled and ate up, shure, by his ould marm and he” was cleverly fooled by the wonderful biddy and, with his wicked mother, was killed outright when “the pot o’ boilin’ wather came over thim, kersplash,
“And scalted thim both to death
So they couldn’t brathe no more,
An’ the little schmall rid hin lived safe