The big clock in the corner ticked out the seconds with melancholy distinctness. It seemed to Priscilla to be reproachfully repeating: “Pol-ly’s gone! Pol-ly’s gone!” until she could endure it no longer.
“I wanted to tell Polly I was sorry,” she gasped in a difficult whisper.
“Sorry for what, dearest?”
“The day I fell—I—I was horrid to Polly,” went on the penitent little voice in a broken undertone. “I—I wouldn’t play with her first-off when she wanted me to and then, when she went out to Pine Lodge, I was lonesome and I wanted her, and so I went there too. I didn’t have my doll and we couldn’t play. I asked her to get it ’cause I was tired. She was tired too; she had a big bump on her head that hurt her; she let me feel it thump. But—I teased her to get my doll; I kept right on teasing.—She would have gone then but you’d told her not to leave me alone there and then—and then—I felt wicked in my heart and wanted to be horrid and—I thought it would frighten her if I got up on the bench where you said I mustn’t. She begged me to get down—but I leaned over—just to tease her. And I said I’d get down if she’d fetch my doll. At last, after ever so long, she said she’d go and then I got down.—But—but I guess she was ’xasp’rated, I had teased her so, and leaned over the edge when she said I shouldn’t, and wouldn’t even let her hold on to my skirt and—and—so—she shook me. She ’most cried the minute she had done it and asked me to forgive her and make up. But I wouldn’t.—I don’t know why I was so horrid;—it was awful—it choked me—but I couldn’t vanquish it—I just kept on teasing her to get my doll.—Then she did.—While she was gone I tried to think of a way to pay her back for shaking me—and by and by I thought of one.—When she brought the doll I just walked over to the bench and got up on it again. I did it to pay her back.—She begged me not to—and I did—and then—I fell—and it wasn’t Polly’s fault and—I—I want Polly!”
And this was how Priscilla fought her first great battle with her conscience and won. Her mother, hearing her heart flutter and bound, and feeling the cold drops of moisture on her temples, knew that the struggle had been a fierce one and loved her all the better for it.
And somehow Priscilla had never felt so happy in all her life, in spite of her unhappiness, as she did in that moment when her beautiful young mother, of whom she had always stood a little in awe, kissed her tenderly on her forehead and said: “God bless my little girl for being honest enough to tell the truth and brave enough to confess her fault,” and they had both cried and clung together and felt that they were very fast friends indeed.
But in the meantime it was growing darker every moment and still Polly had not been found. Hannah came hastening up to report that no trace of her had been discovered anywhere out of doors and Theresa had no better news to tell of their search within.
“She was all right and well this morning, I do assure you, madam,” the maid insisted. “I served her breakfast with my own hands. She seemed terribly upset, I will own, when you went away, but after a while it seemed as if she had found something to take up her mind for she was more contented-like. Since she’s been missing it has occurred to me that perhaps she intended to run away and that she was planning how to do it all the time I thought she was just amusing herself with books and so on. I never was the prying kind, but I wonder if it would be a good idea to look around and see if her things are all here—her clothes, I mean, and such-like.”
Mrs. Duer thought it would be an extremely good idea and Hannah made haste to the little girl’s bureau drawers and closet. A great lump rose in her throat as she discovered that the very finest and daintiest of her garments—the ones Polly had liked the best—were missing from their customary places.
But Theresa was fingering the articles on Polly’s little table in the corner, pulling the books and papers about and rummaging among them busily. Suddenly she gave a start and exclamation: