"METHINKS YOU ARE MY GLASS"
Just across the street from the old Ashton place was another house equally old and yet wholly unlike it, for instead of being a stately, well-kept-up mansion with great rooms and broad halls and half an acre of garden about it, this was a cottage of the earliest New England type. It was low and rambling, covering a good deal of ground and yet without any porch and very little yard, because as the village closed about it and Elm Street became a fashionable quarter the land had been gradually sold until now its white picket fence was only a dozen feet from the front door and passers-by could easily have looked inside its parlor windows save for the tall bushes that served as a shield. By immemorial custom the cottage had always been painted white and green, but for a good many years it had not been troubled by any paint at all, "but had lived," as Polly said, "on its past, and like a good many persons in Woodford had gotten considerably run down by the process."
Now there were no lights at any of the front windows, although it was eight o'clock in the evening, but as the warm steady glow of a lamp shone from the rear of the house, it was plainly occupied.
There was no doubt of this in the mind of the girl who stood knocking noisily at the closed door, saying in an imploring voice:
"Oh, do please hurry, Polly dear, you know it is only me and that I can't bear to be kept waiting."
At this moment a candle was evidently being borne down the hall, for the door opened so quickly afterwards that two girls, one on either side the door, fell into, one another's arms.
"Dear me, it's 'The Princess' and she is no more ill than I am, though we were told she couldn't possibly be at school to-day on account of her ill health," the girl on the inside spoke first, recovering her breath. "I suppose royal persons may lie abed and nurse their dispositions, while poor ones have to keep on washing dishes. But come on into the kitchen, Betty, we are in there to-night and I haven't yet finished my chores."
She led the way with the candle down the shabby hall until both girls entered the lighted room. There, with a little cry of surprise, Betty ran over and dropped down on her knees by the side of a lounge.
The woman on the lounge was not so large as the girl, although her brown hair showed a good deal of gray and her face looked tired and worn. She had been holding a magazine in her hands, but evidently had not been reading, for her eyes had turned from the girl, who stood only a few feet away from her drying some cups and saucers, to the two others who had just come in, without an instant's delay.
"I am quite all right, dear," she answered the newcomer, "only the kitchen seemed so warm and cozy after the wet day and I was tired."