“Yes,” said Polly, “real true gold; and it was—oh! so big, you can’t think, and ever so thick through. Well, and on it dangled the green umbrella, for that was the place where it always had to be kept whenever Araminta Sophia brought it home. I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t hung it up there.”
“Didn’t anybody ever carry it but Araminta Sophia?” asked Percy.
“Dear me, no,” said Polly; “for if they should, it would run away with them.”
“Oh! make the queer old man carry it, and have it run away with him,” screamed Joel; “do, Polly.”
“No, no,” said old Mr. King, seeing Polly hesitate; “I sha’n’t have any such work as that. This story is begun, and I’m going to hear the rest about Araminta Sophia. Go on, Polly, my girl.”
“And some other day I’ll tell you how the queer old man did carry the green umbrella, and it did run away with him,” said Polly, with a bright smile for all. “Well, so Araminta Sophia took down the green umbrella from its golden peg, and then she hung a little basket on her arm to bring the fish home in, and off she started, as nice as you please. And just as soon as she got outside the door of the perfectly funny little house, all the birds in the tree that hung over it, and in the trees all around, whispered to each other, and piped and trilled, and sang it over and over, ‘Here comes the green umbrella! Here comes the green umbrella!’”
“What did they all say that for?” asked Joel.
“Oh! you’ll hear,” answered Polly, “if you wait. Well, that is just what all the birds did say; they always said it whenever they saw Araminta Sophia come out under the green umbrella. You see, if she hadn’t got it, all the birds would have flown at her, and jumped down on her head, and made a nest in her hair.”
“Oh, dear me!” cried all the boys together.
“And so she had to take it every single time she went out to walk,” said Polly decidedly, “else it would have been perfectly dreadful. Well, off she went, with the little basket that she was to bring the fish home in, hanging on her arm; when, as she turned a sudden corner, an old woman with a big brown cloak on, and her face all hidden in the back of a big hood, stepped up to her and said, ‘Pretty little lady, what have you there?’ Now Araminta Sophia, had always been told by her father, the queer little man, not to talk to strangers; and she was going right on under her green umbrella, when the old woman said again, ‘Pretty little lady, how your eyes shine! what have you there?’