“I’ll try to behave so she’ll keep me,” said Polly, with a flushed face as she hurried out to old Father Manser. She returned with him after a moment. He was a thin little man, who had a kind word for everybody, but spoke in a husky tone, which Mrs. Ramsdell claimed Mrs. Manser had “frightened him into with her education when she first married him.” However that might be, Father Manser never made a statement in his wife’s presence without an appealing glance toward her for approval.
“Fill up the stove,” said Mrs. Manser, in her most dismal tone, “and see if you can take the chill off this room, father. I presume, though, it’s in my bones and won’t come out; I notice the others are warm enough, for, of course, I’d have heard complaints if they weren’t. Then you might as well oil the machine and get ready to run up the seams of those aprons, if your mother ever gets them done.”
“I declare it riles me to see a man doing woman’s work,” said Mrs. Ramsdell, tugging at a vicious knot, “and doing it all hodge-podge into the bargain!”
Father Manser, all unconscious of her unfavorable criticism, filled up the stove, and then set about oiling the sewing-machine. By the time he had finished, Grandma Manser had put the last careful basting in the last apron seam, and his work was ready for him.
“Now, don’t make your feet go so fast,” cautioned Mrs. Manser, “and stop off carefully, so you won’t break the needles the way you did yesterday, and do keep by the bastings, father. Are your specs on? No, they aren’t. You put them on, this minute!”
“Yes’m,” said Father Manser, meekly, and when his spectacles were astride his nose, he was allowed to put his feet on the treadles and start on his first seam.
“He likes to run the machine,” said Aunty Peebles to Polly. “Seems as if he thought he’d got his foot in the stirrups and was riding, bold and free.”
There were many such times for Father Manser during this dressmaking season, and he enjoyed them, though he knew how much he would miss Polly when she had gone.
In spite of hours spent in the house instead of out in the sweet spring weather, in spite of unwonted tasks, and many serious rebukes from Mrs. Manser, the days flew by instead of dragging slowly along as little Polly wished they would. “Aunty” Peebles, who had never had a real niece; “Grandma” Manser, who had no grandchildren; even poor Mrs. Ramsdell, with her sharp tongue, who had “known all sorts of trials and seen better days,”—all were friends to Polly, the only friends she had in the world beside Mrs. Manser, who had brought her up, with much grumbling, to be sure; kind Father Manser, who sometimes gave her a stick of candy in the dark; and Uncle Sam Blodgett, with whom she had such exciting talks, the hero of the adventure, the tale of which was so suddenly interrupted.
Polly’s heart was sore at the thought of leaving them all; she even felt sorry that she must say good-bye to poor Bob Rust, the grown man with a boy’s mind, who could not be depended on to do the simplest errand.