BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
Her real name was Mary; but there never was such a family for nicknames as the Dyers. Why they ever called pretty Nelly, the oldest girl, "Norken," instead of her royal name Eleanor, nobody could tell; or sober John, "Jinky," or Alice, the "big little girl," as Mary called her, "Pob" and "Phœbus"; but they did, and there are a great many things in this world one has to take as they are, without rhyme or reason. But she always was called Polypod by all the family; and when a stranger said, "What is your little girl's name?" whoever he asked only said, "Mary," and laughed.
Polypod was a dear little soul, as rosy and jolly and loving as a child could be; but sometimes she wanted a playmate. Nelly taught her every day, the school was so far off; and Jinky and Pob always took their dinner when they went, and were too tired or too grown up to play with Polypod when they came home at night; so she racked her brains for amusement. The Dyers lived on a great farm, and back of the house was a hill covered with woods. Polypod had a wild garden, as she called it, under the edge of these woods, where she planted all the pretty wilding flowers, adder's-tongue, squirrel-cups, Dutchman's-breeches, spring-beauty, Quaker-ladies, wet-root, jack-in-the-pulpit, columbine, blue and white violets—everything she could find, except trailing arbutus, which she could not make grow at her pleasure any more than other people can. Then she had a play-place in the big wood-shed for rainy days; a house furnished with broken crockery and nutshells, and inhabited by squash dollies and ladies made out of hollyhock petals. She could stay here all summer whenever she was tired of her garden, or it rained; but in winter was the hard time. She had her rag doll Miss Rosalinda Squires, to be sure, but there was no place to play except in the kitchen or the sitting-room, and Grandpa Dyer always sat by the sitting-room stove asleep, or smoking his pipe, or trying to read the newspaper; he did not like little girls; he was too old, and they made such a noise. Then everybody else was in the kitchen, and mother kept it so awfully clean! All Polypod could do was to go under the dinner table with Rosalinda and play they were living in a cavern, or shut up in jail; for when the leaf was down, and the brown cover on, they found it naturally quite dark under that table.
"Oh dear!" she said, one day, "I do wish I had somefing or somebody to p'ay with me."
Nelly came into the room just as she spoke, and heard her. It never had occurred to anybody in that house that Polypod could be lonely before. She was a little thing, and they all loved her, but they didn't stop to think much about her. If she had warm clothes, plenty to eat, and a dolly, why shouldn't she be satisfied?
"Why, child," said Nelly, "haven't you got the doll?"
"Yes, I've got her, an' she sits there an' sits there, Norken; she don't go a 'peck, she don't talk a singal wingal mite, not the very leastest word. I wish somefing would make her mad an' strike, she keeps so still;" and Polypod heaved a deep sigh as she looked at Rosalinda with melancholy disapproval.
"Mother," said Nelly next day, "can't Polypod have a kitten? The child gets lonesome for something to run about and play with her."
Polypod's eyes sparkled under the table where she was just putting Rosalinda to bed with the measles and scarlet fever—maladies she had herself experienced, and knew how to treat.
"I don't know," answered mother, stopping on the door-sill to consider. "She might for 't I know, but I'm afraid 'twould get into the keepin'-room and plague grandpa. I guess 'tain't best to resk it; she can play with Dolly;" so she shut the door behind her, and Nelly went out into the shed.