"Then, I am going to run down and meet her," declared Polly, with a long breath. "Was it Pennsey's where she was going for the sugar, Miss Rhys?"—pausing a moment.
"Yes," said Miss Rhys, turning back with a sigh of relief to her embroidery again, while Polly hurried off, wishing that she was a boy, when it would be quite proper for her to run through the streets.
"Oh, if it were only Badgertown!" she sighed to herself, thinking of the many happy runs she had enjoyed down the lane to Grandma Bascom's cottage, or over across the fields to the parsonage. "Dear me!"—when a voice, "Polly Pepper, Pol—ly Pepper!" called after her. She looked back, and there, with the window screen up, and her face thrust well forward, was Alexia's aunt, loudly summoning her.
When she saw that Polly heard, and had turned back, she beckoned smartly with her long fingers, on which shone, as Alexia had once said, "all the rings the Rhys family had ever owned," drew in her head, and waited till Polly came up under the window again.
"Oh, Polly, it's just this—how fortunate you hadn't gotten far. I want you to tell Alexia to get me some more green floss at Miss Angell's."
"Yes, Miss Rhys," said Polly, with a dismayed remembrance just how far it was to the little shop where the very latest patterns and materials for fancy work could be obtained, and the first supper of the Cooking Club to be given to-night!
"And stay, Miss Angell may send me up some more patterns to choose from; that is, if she has had any new ones since I was there last week, and I presume that she has."
Polly could only utter, "Yes, Miss Rhys," so very faintly it could scarcely be heard. Dear me! and it was three o'clock already, and all that candy to be made over again!
She crept off on very dismal feet, till she reflected it wouldn't help matters any to lose heart, and so she set forward at a brisk pace again. Miss Rhys pushed down the window screen and set to work with a complacent smile at the prospect of having her errand performed so nicely.
"That's the good of having young people around," she said; "it's so convenient at times to get one's errands done."