THE COURTING OF POLLY ANN
One evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room they found her sitting before the fire rocking gently to and fro and looking thoughtfully at something she held in her hand. When they had drawn up their stools and sat down, she handed the object to them and they passed it from one to the other, examining it eagerly.
It was a button—a pearl button of a peculiar shape, fancifully carved. The holes were filled with silk thread, attaching to the button a bit of faded flannel as if it had been forcibly torn from a garment.
“I found that button today,” Grandma began, “when I was looking for something else, in a little box in the bottom of my trunk. I had forgotten I had it. It came off my brother Stanley’s fancy waistcoat, and the way of it was this:
“Stanley had been away at school all year, and when he came home he had some stylish new clothes—among other things a pair of lavender trousers and a waistcoat to match and a ruffled shirt and some gay silk cravats.
“Every Sunday he dressed up as fine as could be, and all the girls were nice to him. But he didn’t pay any attention to any of them except Polly Ann Nesbit, who was the prettiest girl in all the country round about. Some people called Polly Ann’s hair red, but it wasn’t. It was a deep rich auburn, and she had brown eyes and a fair creamy skin. Besides being pretty she was sweet-tempered, though lively and gay.
“Polly Ann had so many beaux that when she was sixteen every one thought she would be married before the year was out, and her father—Polly Ann was his only child—said that he wouldn’t give Polly Ann to any man. He needn’t have worried, for Polly Ann was so hard to please that she was still unwed at twenty when Stanley came home from school. By that time her father was telling every one how much land he meant to give Polly Ann when she married.
“Stanley hadn’t been home very long until he, like all the other boys, was crazy about Polly Ann, and she favored him more than any of the others. Stanley went to see her every week and escorted her home from parties and singings and took her to ride on Sunday afternoons in his new top buggy. Father suspected he would be wanting to get married, and told him he could have the wheat field on what we called the upper place, to put in a winter crop for himself.
“Then one night at a party at Orbison’s Stanley wore his new lavender waistcoat. Polly Ann wagered the other girls that she could have a button off the waistcoat for her button string, and they wagered her she couldn’t.