My grandmother lay for some time wide-awake, and I could hear the bed shaking with her suppressed laughter. Then she would sigh, and murmur, "Poor, deluded creatures!"
Finally she dropped off to sleep, but I lay awake for the rest of the night, thinking over what had taken place, and wondering whether Polly Jones would obey my grandmother.
I was with her the next day when Polly was announced. Grandmother had been having callers, and was sitting in the drawing-room looking very quaint and pretty in her black velvet dress and tiny lace cap.
Polly, a bouncing country-girl, came in hanging her head. Grandmother sat up very straight on the sofa and asked, "Would you like to go to the penitentiary, Polly Jones?"
"Oh, no, ma'am!" gasped Polly.
"Would you like to come and live with me for awhile?" said my grandmother.
Now Polly did not want to do this, but she knew that she must fall in with my grandmother's plans; so she hung her head a little lower and whispered, "Yes, ma'am."
"Very well, then," my grandmother said, "go and get your things."
The next day my grandmother called to her the cook, the housemaid, and the small boy that ran errands.
"You have all worked faithfully," she said, "and I am going to give you a holiday. Here is some money for you, and do not let me see you again for a month. Polly Jones is going to stay with me."