Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl

by L. T. Meade

The news of the calamity which had befallen Polly had reached Maggie’s ears. Maggie thought only of Polly in this trouble; it was Polly’s baby who was lost, it was Polly whose heart would be broken. She did not consider the others in the matter. It was Polly, the Polly whom she so devotedly loved, who filled her whole horizon. When the news was told her she scarcely said a word; a heavy, “Eh!—you don’t say!” dropped from her lips. Even George, who was her informer, wondered if she had really taken in the extent of the catastrophe; then she had turned on her heel and walked down to her mother’s cottage.

She was not all thoughtless and all indifferent, however. While she looked so stoical and heavy she was patiently working out an idea, and was nerving herself for an act of heroism.

Now as she leant her elbows on the sill by the open window, cold Fear came and stood by her side. She was awfully frightened, but her resolve did not falter. She meant to slip away in the dusk and walk across Peg-Top Moor to the hermit’s hut. An instinct, which she did not try either to explain away or prove, led her to feel sure that she should find Polly’s baby in the hermit’s hut. She would herself, unaided and alone, bring little Pearl back to her sister.

It would have been quite possible for Maggie to have imparted her ideas to George, to her mother, or to some of the neighbors. There was not a person in the village who would not go to the rescue of the Doctor’s child. Maggie might have accompanied a multitude, had she so willed it, to the hermit’s hut. But then the honor and glory would not have been hers; a little reflection of it might shine upon her, but she would not bask, as she now hoped to do, in its full rays.

She determined to go across the lonely moor which she so dreaded alone, for she alone must bring back Pearl to Polly.

Shortly before the moon arose, and long after sunset, Maggie crept down the attic stairs, unlatched the house door, and stepped out into the quiet village street. Her fear was that some neighbors would see her, and either insist on accompanying her on her errand, or bring her home. The village, however, was very quiet that night, and at nine o’clock, when Maggie started on her search, there were very few people out.

She came quickly to the top of the small street, crossed a field, squeezed through a gap in the hedge, and found herself on the borders of Peg-Top Moor. The moon was bright by this time, and there was no fear of Maggie not seeing. She stepped over the ground briskly, a solitary little figure with a long shadow ever stalking before her, and a beating, defiant heart in her breast. She had quite determined that whatever agony she went through, her fears should not conquer her; she would fight them down with a strong hand, she would go forward on her road, come what might.

Maggie was an ignorant little cottager, and there were many folk-lore tales abroad with regard to the moor which might have frightened a stouter heart than hers. She believed fully in the ghost who was to be seen when the moon was at the full, pacing slowly up and down, through that plantation of trees at her right; she had unswerving faith in the bogey who uttered terrific cries, and terrified the people who were brave enough to walk at night through Deadman’s Glen. But she believed more fully still in Polly, in Polly’s love and despair, and in the sacredness of the errand which she was now undertaking to deliver her from her trouble.

From Mrs. Ricketts’ cottage to the hermit’s hut there lay a stretch of moorland covering some miles in extent, and Maggie knew that the lonely journey she was taking could not come to a speedy end.

She knew, however, that she had got on the right track and that by putting one foot up and one foot down, as the children do who want to reach London town, she also at last would come to her destination.