“Do you know where Polly is?” suddenly demanded Mrs. Ramsdell, bending over the knitter and shouting fiercely in her ear. “Why isn’t she up here this dull afternoon? The only bright thing there is in this house! What’s your daughter-in-law keeping her downstairs for?”
“Polly?” repeated Grandma Manser, gently. She had evidently heard only part of the gusty speech. “Polly told me she was planning to be out in the woodshed, to help Uncle Sam Blodgett saw and split, this afternoon. She said she’d be up to recite a piece to us before supper.”
“H’m! I should think it was high time she came, then,” said Mrs. Ramsdell, crossly. But after a minute her wrinkled face grew still more wrinkled with the smile that broke over it as she heard a clattering sound on the garret stairs. A second later a rosy face about which danced a mop of short brown curls peeped around the old bureau which hid the stairway from the group gathered near the windows.
“You’re a naughty little piece, that’s what you are, to stay down in the woodshed with Sam’l Blodgett, instead of coming up here to entertain us,” cried Mrs. Ramsdell, with twinkling eyes that contradicted the severity of her tone. “What have you been doing down there, I’d like to know?”
“I’ve been listening to war stories,” said Polly Prentiss, coming out from behind the bureau. “I’ve been hearing about Uncle Blodgett’s nephew who died down South and ‘though but nineteen years of age displayed great bravery on the field of battle.’ That’s on his tombstone,” said Polly, seating herself on a little stool close to Grandma Manser and reaching out her hand to pat Ebenezer, the big Maltese cat.
“Pretty doings!” grumbled Mrs. Ramsdell, but she smiled at Polly as she went over to the rocking chair by Aunty Peebles. “We old folks have been taking things out of our trunks and putting ’em back again just to keep up heart till you came, except grandma there; she’s kept to her knitting, so’s not to disturb Ebenezer of his nap, I suppose.”
“Ebenezer’s a splendid cat, if he does like to sleep most of the time, and looks like Mrs. Manser’s old sack that the moths got into,” said Polly, with a laugh. “Oh, did any of you know there was a visitor downstairs?—that Miss Pomeroy with the sharp eyes. Seemed as if she’d look right through me last Sunday, after church. I guess she’s pleasant, though.”
“Folks can afford to be pleasant when they own property and have good clothes to their backs.” said Mrs. Ramsdell. “I don’t know as Hetty Pomeroy’s disposition would be any better than some other folks’ if ’twas tried in the furnace. Her father had a high temper, I’ve heard.”
“She’s had her trials, Miss Hetty has,” said Aunty Peebles, gently. “She’s all alone in the world now, excepting for Arctura Green that’s always worked in the family. You know she was to have had her brother’s little girl to adopt, and the child died of diphtheria last fall. I understand it was a great grief to Miss Hetty.”
“What’s she here for in all this rain?” questioned Mrs. Ramsdell, sharply.