Polly ran into the bedroom and came back on her tiptoes. “Phronsie’s asleep,” she said. “Now I’m awfully glad, for I can clean out the stove. Then I can get the bread in.” She ran over and knelt down before the old stove, and presently there was a great to-do with the brush and the little shovel and the old woolen cloths.
Mrs. Pepper sighed as she rolled up in a newspaper two coats that she had just finished. “I don’t know what I should ever do without you, Polly,” she said, looking over at her.
“Don’t you, Mamsie?” cried Polly in great delight, and sitting back on her heels, she brought up a countenance with long black streaks running across it. “Don’t you really, Mamsie?”
“No, I don’t,” said Mrs. Pepper, “and that is a fact. Mother wouldn’t know what to do without you. But dear me, child, what a pair of black hands—and your face, Polly!” as she went into the bedroom to put on her bonnet.
Polly looked down at her hands. Then she burst out laughing. “I brushed back my hair,” she said, “it tumbled into my eyes so,” and she jumped up and ran to the cracked looking glass hanging over in the corner. “My! what a sight I am!”
“Let me see,” cried Joel, rushing over. “Don’t wash it off, Polly, let me see!”
David flung down the broom and tumbled after. “Let me see, too, Polly.”
“I look just like that old black man who used to come after rags,” said Polly, turning around on them and holding up her hands.
“Oh, you do—you do!” howled Joel in huge delight, while Davie crowed and clapped his hands. “You do, just exactly like him, Polly!”
“Wait a minute,” said Polly. She rushed out and came running back with Ben’s old cap on her head and her arms in his coat. “Now wouldn’t you think I was that old black man?” she said, stalking up and down the kitchen crying out, “Any rags, Mam?” and she swung the big potato bag at them.