"My mother died, Dotty, when I was a creeping baby. The woman who took me to bring up was a hard-faced woman. She made me work like a slave."
"Did she? But by and by you grew up, Miss Polly, and, when you had a husband, he didn't make you a dog—did he?"
"I never had a husband or anybody else to take care of me," said Polly. "Come, children, we must go into the house."
They all three entered the parlor, and Miss Whiting fastened the window tightly to exclude the air, for it was one of her afflictions that she was "easy to take cold."
"I don't see," queried Dotty, "why your husband didn't marry you. I should have thought he would."
"He didn't want to, I suppose," said Polly, grimly.
Dotty fell into a brown study. It was certainly very unkind in some man that he hadn't married Miss Polly and taken care of her, so she need not have wandered around the world with a double-covered basket and a snuff-box. It was a great pity; still Dotty could not see that just now it had anything to do with Polly's forgetting to set the table. "I'm so hungry," said she; "isn't it 'most supper time?"
"It's only five; but you appear to be so lonesome that I'll make a fire this minute and put on the tea-kettle," replied the kind-hearted Polly. "What does your grandmother generally have for supper?"
"Cake sometimes," answered Dotty, her eyes brightening; "and tarts."
"And perjerves," added Katie; "and—and—yice puddin'."