Then she sent Polly back to the garden, and the pot was put in its place, again. And a week or two after, as grandmother was just going to make room in the earth for a new plant, she saw growing there a little green sprig, which was not a weed. She listened a moment, and heard the child’s voice outside.
“Polly, my dear, are you sure you scattered all the seeds of your pretty apple the day you were so provoked at their not having begun to grow for you?”
The child reddened a little, and turned away.
“I don’t know, grandmother. I think so; I wished to then.”
How delighted she was when the old lady showed her the treasure, and how carefully it was watched and tended! For one little seed had been buried deeper than the rest, and now in the sunshine of grandmother’s wide window it had come up. Every pleasant day it was placed somewhere in the sun, and at night it was always carried to Polly’s own room. Her dolls and other old play-house friends, formerly much honored, and of great consequence, were quite neglected for “the apple tree,” as she always called the tiny thing with its few bits of leaves.
And now we must leave the Brentons’ old stone house and the garden. All this happened in the days of King Charles I., when there was a great war, and the country in a highly discordant state. Polly’s father was on the king’s side, and one day he did something which was considered particularly unpardonable by his enemies, and at night he came riding from Oxford in the greatest hurry he had ever been in; and riding after him were some of Cromwell’s men. It was bright moonlight, and as he rode in the paved yard the great dogs in their kennels began to bark, and that waked Polly’s mother, in a terrible fright at hearing her husband’s voice, and sure something undesirable had happened.
Squire Brenton hurried in to tell her, in as few words as possible, what he had done, and that he was followed, and had just time to say good by, and take another horse, and rush on to the sea, where he hoped to find a fishing-boat, by means of which he could escape.
“And you,” said he, “had better take Polly and one of the men, and ride to your cousin Matthew’s; for in their rage at my escape, they may mean to burn my house. I little thought a month ago,—when he offered you ‘a safe home,’ and I laughed in his face, and said, ‘Give your good wife the same message; for she may not find your house so safe as mine by and by,’—that you would need to accept so soon.”
“But I cannot go there now,” said Mistress Brenton; “for cousin Matthew is away with the Roundhead army, and his wife and sister have gone to the north. I’ll go with you. Listen: I heard one of the maids say to-day that a ship sails to-morrow at daybreak from the bay by Dunner’s with a company of Puritans for Holland, on their way to one of the American colonies. We will go for a time to our friends in Amsterdam, and be quite safe.”
Anything was better than staying where he was; and Squire Brenton, bidding her hurry, went to the stables with his tired horse, and waking one of his men whom he could trust, told him why he was there, and to say, when the men came, that he was in Oxford yesterday, when they had a letter, and that Mistress Brenton had gone north to some friends. He gave him some messages for his brother, and then, sending him out to a field with the horse he had been riding, which would certainly have betrayed him, he went back to the yard, trying to keep the two fresh horses still, while he listened, fearing every moment to hear his pursuers coming down the road.