"Do not know whether Polly can come!" repeated Mrs. Chatterton sharply, and leaning forward in her chair. "Didn't I say I wanted her?"
"You did." Marian's tone did not lose a note of its ordinary gentleness. "But I shall ask her if she is willing to do it as a favor, Mrs. Chatterton; you quite understand that, of course?" She, too, leaned forward in her chair, and gazed into the cold, hard face.
"Just like your father," cried Mrs. Chatterton, settling herself irascibly back in the chair-depths again. "There is no hope that affairs in this house will mend. I wash my hands of you."
"I am so glad that you consider me like my father," said Mrs. Whitney gleefully as a child. "We surely are united on this question."
"May I read some more?" cried Polly, coming in softly, and trying to calm the impetuous rush of delight as her eyes met Mrs. Whitney's.
"Yes; I am waiting for you," said Mrs. Chatterton. "Begin where you left off."
Mrs. Whitney bit her pretty lips and slipped out of her chair, just pausing a moment to lay her hand on the young shoulder as she passed, and a world of comfort fell upon Polly, shut in once more to her dreary task.
"How perfectly splendid that I didn't go to Silvia Home's luncheon party now!" cried Polly's heart over and over between the lines. "If I had, I should have missed dear Auntie's home-coming, and Dicky's." She glanced up with luminous eyes as she whirled the sheet. Mrs. Chatterton, astonishing as it may seem, was actually smiling.
"It's some comfort to hear you read," she observed with a sigh of enjoyment, "because you enjoy it yourself. I wouldn't give a fig for anybody to try to do it."
Polly felt like a guilty little thing to take this quietly, and she eased her conscience by being more glad that she was in that very room doing that very task. And so the moments sped on.