Mrs. Manser’s tall, thin figure and sallow, discontented face had a depressing effect on all of them, as she stood in her dark brown calico, leaning against the old bureau.
“Mary Prentiss,” she said, solemnly, “your chance has come, thanks to the way I’ve brought you up and kept you clean. Miss Hester Pomeroy, of Pomeroy Oaks, is coming next Thursday morning to take you home with her for a month’s trial, and if you do your best and follow all I tell you, there’s a likelihood Miss Pomeroy will adopt you for good and all. And now, we won’t have any talk or fuss over it, for I shall need everybody’s help to get you fit to go in time. We’re going to have supper early to-night, so you’d better all follow me down right off, to be on hand.”
Then Mrs. Manser turned and creaked slowly down the stairs, while Polly looked from the bewildered panther to the trembling edges of the wood with something very like tears in her brown eyes, and Ebenezer, after a thorough stretching of all his paws, disappeared around the bureau and hurried down to his evening meal.
CHAPTER II
GETTING READY
IT seemed to Polly that no days before ever flew so fast as the ones between that rainy Thursday afternoon in April and the next Thursday morning. To be sure, Polly was not accustomed to having new clothes especially made for her, and the hours spent in being fitted and re-fitted were just a waste of precious time, in her eyes.
Aunty Peebles was the best dressmaker at Manser Farm. Her fingers were old and sometimes they trembled, but in her day she had been a famous seamstress, and even now she could hem a ruffle much better than Mrs. Manser.
“I don’t know just what the reason is my work looks better than some,” said Aunty Peebles, flushing with delight, one morning when Polly had said, “Oh, what bee-yu-tiful even, little bits of stitches you do make!”
“It’s experience, that’s all it is,” said Mrs. Manser, dejectedly, as she sat gathering the top of a pink gingham sleeve; “if I’d been brought up to it instead of all the education I had that’s no good to me now, I should be thankful, I’m sure.”
“She’d never be thankful for anything,” whispered Mrs. Ramsdell, who was ripping out bastings and constantly encountering knots which had been “machined in” and did not soothe her temper; “’taint in her, and you know it, Miss Peebles, well as I do.”
“Mary,” said Mrs. Manser, fretfully, “don’t sit there doing nothing. Let me see how you’re getting on with that patchwork. My back’s almost broken, and I’ve got chills. You go and tell Father Manser to bring in some wood, and then you thread me up some needles, and fill the pincushion, and I’ve got some basting for you to do. What a looking square you’ve made of that last one! Well, I don’t believe Miss Hetty’ll keep you more than just the month, and all this sewing and these two nice ginghams will go for nothing.”