CHAPTER V
POLLY’S PLUCK
Angeline Montague did not tell her mother the forfeit she had had to pay to “redeem” the beautiful doll she had brought home from Miss Cicely’s party. In the first place, she conveniently forgot it, and in the second, she always made a point of keeping very still when her mother was in a “tantrum,” and her mother was in a terrible one that day. Something had gone wrong somewhere, for the moment Angeline reached home her mother had caught her by the arm and swung her about roughly, saying: “Ho! So here you are, are you? Then you didn’t get it, did you? And after all the trouble I went to, to teach you how to bow and to hold your tongue and to speak soft and genteel when you did speak! And the money I spent on your clothes, too! I’ve half a mind to beat you well, you great silly. What under the sun your Aunt Theresa’ll do to you, I don’t know—like as not she’ll put you in jail or send you to the reform-school or something. I do declare I never saw such a numb-scull! Where’s your brains, I’d like to know, to let any one else get ahead of you like that?”
Angeline sobbed.
“There now,” continued her mother less harshly. “Quit that, and take off those togs you’ve got on. It makes me just wild to see ’em and think what they cost, and then what a fool you were to let such a chance slip through your fingers.”
Angeline sobbed still more piteously. She knew it was the only way to disarm her mother. After a minute or two the angry woman said: “Hush, hush, I tell you, Angeline, or the neighbors’ll think I’m killing you—and they have enough to say about us already. Besides, you’d better save your tears till your Aunt Theresa comes, for you’ll need ’em then, or I’m mistaken. She ain’t as easy as I am, not by a long sight, and she’ll scold the life out of us both for your foolishness. She’ll probably stop paying for your board and keep into the bargain, and then what’ll become of us, I don’t see. We’ll be turned out into the street, most likely, for I’m two weeks behind with the rent as it is, and goodness knows where I’ll get the money to pay up.”
Angeline’s sobs grew softer. “I did the best I could,” she whimpered. “I never told a livin’ soul my name ain’t Montague or that Aunt Theresa is my aunt, an’ I bowed just like you tol’ me to, an’ I didn’t hardly say annything to annyboddy. I just smiled the way you showed me, as soft as ever I could, an’ Mis’ Hamilton she said I was a sweet little thing. I listened an’ I heard her. I didn’t let noboddy get ahead of me nor nothing. I got the best cakes an’ the biggest orange an’—an’—I would have got a—other things too, but a big man, he was real mean and kept looking!”
“Well, go ’long with you now,” said her mother, whose true name was McGaffey. “Take off those duds or you’ll tear ’em or something an’ then the fat will be in the fire.”
Later that evening when Angeline was in bed her mother had a visitor. It was Theresa, and her angry voice made the little girl quail. She knew Aunt Theresa well and dreaded her, so she pretended to be asleep when her bedroom door was rudely flung open and quick steps came toward her where she lay.