“It seems to me I remember that there used to be a little iron bank here somewhere, full of loose change, wasn’t there, Hannah?”
“Yes! Why?” responded Hannah almost harshly.
“Because it isn’t here now,” replied Theresa.
“It was Polly’s own bank,” Priscilla whispered in her mother’s ear. “The money belonged to her, to do what she liked with. When Cousin Cissy gave her some or Uncle Arthur did, or anybody, Polly always put it in her bank, and she said she meant to buy things with it for some people she knew; and I guess she meant us.”
While Priscilla was talking Theresa, with a great ado, pulled open the little drawer of the table. It came out with a jerk and there, directly before her, lay the broken fragments of the bank. Without a word she gathered them up and brought them to her mistress. They seemed convincing proof that Polly had deliberately planned to go away (without doubt back to the city) and had taken her savings to pay her fare.
Mrs. Duer rose. “That is enough, Theresa,” she said sadly. “Put those pieces back where you found them, please, and then you can go down-stairs. I shall not need you here any longer.”
She was anxious to be alone with Hannah.
As soon as the maid had left the room she turned to the nurse exclaiming: “Oh, Hannah, it seems impossible! I can’t believe it of the child. She promised me faithfully not to go beyond the gates and I trusted her perfectly.”
Hannah hesitated. “Polly thought you didn’t trust her,” she said quietly. “It was only the night before we left home that she told me you had said you couldn’t trust her any more. If it’s true that she has deliberately gone away I think there’s no doubt but that’s why. But I’m not ready to believe she’s run off so without a word of thanks for all the love and kindness and generosity’s been shown her in this house. It wouldn’t be like her. I won’t believe it till I must.”
But Mrs. Duer’s thoughts were traveling back to the last time she had seen the little girl: that afternoon in the living-room when she had asked her about Priscilla’s accident, when she had told her she could not trust her any more. She remembered the hurt look in Polly’s eyes and the quiver in her voice as she asked to be permitted to go back to the store where—where—(it was all clear to her now) where they did trust her, where they thought she was “a good cash-girl.” Like a flash the whole thing explained itself to Mrs. Duer. Polly had gone back to the city, back to her old place. In a few hurried words she told Hannah of what she was thinking: