“I never tasted a chocolate cream before,” she said, slowly. “I don’t suppose there’s anything else so nice to eat in all the world, is there? I wish Aunty Peebles had some of these. I shall save her half; that is, if you’re willing,” she added, hastily.
“I’m afraid they’ll be pretty hard and dry before you see Aunty Peebles again,” said Miss Pomeroy, and Polly’s heart sank in spite of the delicious taste in her mouth.
“I don’t expect she’s going to let me see Manser Farm again, till next Christmas, probably, if she adopts me,” thought Polly. “Of course, candy is good for ’most a year if you keep it carefully, but it does begin to get a little hard. I know, because those two peppermints Father Manser gave me yesterday were the last of the ones he bought for Thanksgiving, and they were just a little hard, though, of course, they were nice.”
“Maybe I could give some of them to the butcher to take to Aunty Peebles, if—if he comes to Pomeroy Oaks,” ventured Polly, after a short silence, during which Daisy was trotting along the road, out of the village, past the square white church with its tall steeple, past the tinsmith’s shop, on toward the meadows beyond which lay Polly’s undiscovered country.
“He comes twice a week,” said Miss Pomeroy; “but wouldn’t you like to send Aunty Peebles a little box of fresh candy by mail, some day, to surprise her? You could put it in the post office, and Mr. Manser would get it when he goes for the mail, and take it to her.”
“Oh!” said Polly, her eyes brimming over with gratitude; “Oh, aren’t you good! Why, Aunty Peebles hasn’t ever had anything from the post office excepting once a year her second cousin from way out West sends her a paper with the list of deaths in the town where she lives, and sometimes there’s an ink mark to show it’s been a friend of her second cousin’s family; but,” said Polly, shaking her head, “it ’most always made Aunty Peebles cry when it came, and I believe she would rather not have had it.”
“I should say not, indeed,” assented Miss Pomeroy; “just hear that bird, Mary! He’s telling cheerful news, isn’t he?”
Polly hugged herself with sudden joy. Miss Pomeroy evidently liked birds, or she would never have spoken in that way. “Probably she’ll leave the windows open, so I can hear them when I’m reading and sewing and doing quiet things, like Eleanor,” she thought, happily; but all she said was, “Oh, yes’m; isn’t he glad spring has come, don’t you believe?”
“I believe he is, my dear,” said Miss Pomeroy; “and now, if you look ahead, you can see through the trees the roof of the house where you are going to live for a little while, at any rate.”
“For always,” said Polly, firmly, to herself. “Miss Pomeroy’s good as she can be, and there’s Grandma Manser’s ear trumpet, and Mrs. Manser’s poor health, and all I’ve got to do is to learn to like to sew and read better than to play, and to stay in the house and be quiet instead of running wild outdoors. That isn’t much,” said Polly, scornfully, to herself, “for a big girl like me.”