"Is it a princess I have got to do my work, perchance?" said the cross old thing. "Thy father is far enough off in the field, not here to spoil thee, by luck; so do thou and that idle girl yonder set to work and finish washing the linen. That's party enough for trapesing girls, in my mind!"
So Rosy, too, was forced into service, and all through the long afternoon she toiled with aching limbs. When night came, she and Annette were glad to seek a straw bed in a tiny roof-chamber and cry themselves to sleep.
"Never mind," said Annette, patiently; "to-morrow, perhaps, she may be kinder, and after we have worked all the forenoon in the field, who knows but we may have our party yet?"
Rosy remembered nothing more, except opening her eyes full upon the hearth in her mother's drawing-room, where she was immediately addressed by one of the old-fashioned brass andirons.
"I should just like to show you what a party was in my time," it said, in a cracked, high-pitched voice. "We, sister Peggy and I, belonged, as you know, to your mother's grandmother—a good old Revolutionary stock—and we lived in the old house up yonder in Salem, Massachusetts, until your mother took it into her fanciful head to fetch us here. I should like to know what we have in common with that little fiddle-faddle Dresden china clock and shepherdesses upon the mantel-piece! However, I won't talk about my grievances, for sister Peggy always says that it is in very bad taste, and sister Peggy knows. We lived in the room where your grandmother was born, my dear, and her first cap was fitted upon sister Peggy's knob——"
"Will she never stop to take breath," Rosy wondered. "I am dying to ask her a question. What's your name?" she suddenly called out, so abruptly as to make the old andiron jump, and let fall a broken brand upon the hearth.
"Dear me, child, how you fluttered me!" it said, reprovingly. "I am sister Polly, of course, as you would have heard in due time. Sister Peggy always says that little girls should be seen and not heard, and sister Peggy knows—Where was I—Oh! when your grandmother grew old enough to invite her little friends to share her hospitality, the boys and girls would arrive at about three o'clock in the afternoon. The girls wore plain print gowns, and muslin aprons edged with tambour work. Instead of that insane mop of hair you sport, with a bow in the middle, looking for the world and all like your terrier, Fluff, they had decent mob caps. Their hands were covered with mittens, and each one earned a bag with a piece of white seam (or plain stitching), or else a sampler frame. How pretty it was to see them sitting down to their work for awhile! Then the tea-table was spread, with flowered china cups and plates, and shining silver, muffins, crumpets, sliced ham, home-made preserves and cream, and waffles strewn with cinnamon and sugar——"
"You make my mouth water," said Rosy.
"All this took place by five o'clock," said sister Polly, "and afterward the children had a good game of 'blind-man's-buff,' or 'hunt-the-slipper'—and a handful of nuts with a big red apple, to stuff in each of their pockets upon going home. I remember a very little party your mamma had once, when she was a child——"
"Do you? Tell me about it, please," said Rosy, eagerly, for nothing was ever so enchanting to those children as stories about their mamma in her youth.