“Well, I never!” she exclaimed again, as she sat down heavily and she raised her long hands.
“Please let me go home,” begged Polly, faintly, and turning away her brown eyes from the big, square figure. “Oh, please, sir, do let me.”
“Oh, Jerusha,”—Parson Henderson held Polly’s hand tightly as he turned to his sister,—“I want to talk to this little girl now, so please go into the keeping-room.”
“How you can be so imposed on, Adoniram, is more’n I can see,” Miss Jerusha snorted, but she got up from her chair, stalked out, and brought the door to with a spiteful little snip. If she was going at all, she would do it thoroughly.
When Polly Pepper was let out of the big door, she had a posy in one hand, and in the other, a paper bag holding half a dozen little cupcakes fresh from the parsonage oven that very morning.
“Now come again soon, Polly.” Mrs. Henderson bent and kissed the rosy cheek.
“Yes’m,” said Polly, with a happy little thrill, “and oh, thank you so much, dear Mrs. Henderson, for Mamsie’s cakes, and the flowers.” She gave a little hug to the posy and her brown eyes danced.
“I’m glad you love flowers so much, Polly,” said the minister’s wife, happy enough that she had cut her two precious rose-geranium blossoms. “Well, come again, child, when you can.”
The dimity curtain in the keeping-room window was twitched away to admit a long face with its sharp eyes peering around the ruffled edge. But Polly didn’t see it as she skipped happily down the path to the gate, and the minister’s wife hurrying back along the hall to the study, was not conscious of the “Almira” called too late.
“Well?” The parson who had recovered his pen, laid it down again.