“I s’pose, maybe, she’s waiting for us at the door,” she murmured still hopefully, and kept her brown eyes fixed resolutely before her so that, when the carriage should swing around the sweep in the driveway and under the porte-cochêre, she might be the first to call out the glad “Hello!” that would show Polly she was sorry and wanted to be friends again; but only Theresa stood upon the steps to receive them, and Polly was nowhere to be seen.
Priscilla suffered herself to be lifted out of the carriage without a word. Her chin was quivering a little but she did not cry. Perhaps Polly was hiding somewhere and meant to surprise her by springing out unexpectedly to welcome her with a kiss and a hug.
Priscilla was naturally very timid, but in her eagerness to find Polly she braved the shadowy staircases and lonely dim halls without a moment’s hesitation.
“P’raps she’s in the nursery and won’t come down ’cause I was horrid and wouldn’t see her before I went away. Of course that’s it! Why didn’t I think of it before?” Priscilla reasoned, and she ran along the upper hall crying, “Polly! Polly! I’m home again! Where are you, Polly dear?”
But no jolly little figure came bounding forward in answer to her call and the only sounds to be heard were those of her own quick-coming breaths and the solemn ticking of the big clock in the corner. Then the dimness, the quiet and the sense of her loneliness and disappointment overcame Priscilla and with a long, quivering sob she cast herself face downward upon the nursery-couch, where she and Polly had played so many happy times and cried the bitterest tears she had ever shed.
Down-stairs all was in the greatest confusion, for it seemed that no one was able to inform Mrs. Duer where Polly was. Lawrence and Richard, the coachman and groom, declared they had not seen her near the stables all day: “And she never missed a morning all the time you were gone, madam, to come out and give Oh-my an apple or a lump of sugar.”
Theresa declared she had served the child her breakfast but hadn’t had a glimpse of her since.
“I was so busy getting the place in order, to receive you, that I hadn’t a minute to think of Polly,” she confessed. “And when she didn’t come in to luncheon I didn’t feel I could spare the time to hunt for her.”
“And yet I left her especially in your charge,” Mrs. Duer said, in stern rebuke.