Underneath the cover was a piece of paper, with this written on it:
Will Polly please accept these few articles in token that she forgives me for having justly offended her by offering pay for a service which can never be paid for?
Mrs. E. G. Edson.
When she heard that, Polly wasn't quite so riled. She said Jessie's Ma was a rale lady, anyway, and she might as well see what she had sent. So, wiping her hands on her apron, she planted herself in the door-way, while Ma went to work to empty the box.
First, there were six calico dress-patterns,—one purple, sprinkled with little black rings, and another pink, with a criggly vine running through it, and a black-striped white one, and the rest mixed colors.
Then beneath were three more dresses, of some sheeny stuff,—alapaca, Ma called it,—black, purple and brown, that took every inch of dander out of Polly. She wiped her hands extra clean, and came and twisted them this way and that, and crinkled them and smoothed them, and puckered the ends into folds, and laying them across the ironing-table, backed toward the wall with her head cocked sideways, and her eyes squinted together like Mr. Green's, the portrait-painter, when he looks at pictures.
"Shure, the Quane 'u'd be proud to wear thim!" she said; and said she should have the purple for a wedding-gown.
Then, besides, there was a red and black plaid shawl, and a whole piece of white muslin, such as you buy by the yard mostly, and a work-box, with cases of scissors and needles, and spools of thread and sewing-silk. And last was a bandbox tied with string, and that, Ma said, Polly must open.
"I LOOKED IN ONE OF POLLY'S BRIGHT MILK-PANS."