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.”

“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.

“He’s scatter-witted, I know,” said Polly to herself, “but I shall miss seeing Bob, because I’m used to him.”

Thursday morning came all too soon. Miss Pomeroy was to come for Polly about ten o’clock. At half-past nine Polly, with anxiety written all over her rosy face, was twirling slowly around in the middle of the kitchen, while Mrs. Manser regarded her forlornly from her position in the doorway, with a hand pressed against her forehead.

“I suppose you’ll have to do as you are,” she said at last, with a heavy sigh. “My head aches so, I’m fit for nothing, or I’d see what more I could do with that hair of yours. Is that the very flattest you can get it, Mary? I hope you’re going to remember to answer Miss Pomeroy when she says ‘Mary’ better than you do me, child. It’s your rightful name, and, of course Polly’s no kind of a name for a girl to be adopted by. Did you say you’d done the very best you could with your hair?”

“Yes’m,” said Polly, twisting her hands together, locking and unlocking her fingers in evident excitement. “I wet it sopping wet, and then I patted it all down hard; but it doesn’t stay down very well, I’m afraid.”

Polly was right; in spots her hair was still damp and sleek on her little head, but around these satisfactory spots her short curls rose and danced defiance to brush and water.

“Oh, Ebenezer, I wish I had fur like yours instead of hair!” cried Polly, but Ebenezer only blinked at her, and retired hastily behind the stove as if he feared she might attempt an exchange of head-covering.

“Well,” said Mrs. Manser, dropping into a rocking-chair and clasping her head with both hands, “all I’ve got to say is, you must do the best you can by Miss Pomeroy and all of us. You know just how much depends on Miss Pomeroy’s adopting you. You know what it’ll mean to Father Manser and me and the old folks that I board for almost nothing to keep them off the town, if you are adopted. And Grandma—you’re always saying you’re so fond of her—you’d like her to have one of those new hearing apparatuses, I should suppose.”

“Oh, yes’m,” said Polly, eagerly, “I do love Grandma Manser so, and I want her to have the ap-apyoratus. Will it cost a great deal?”

“I don’t just know,” said Mrs. Manser; “but they say Miss Pomeroy’s going to give five hundred dollars to whatever institution or place she finds the child she keeps, and a present of money to the folks that have brought her up. She didn’t mention it to me, but the butcher told me yesterday ’twas known all about, and she’s been sent for to several places to see children. But she never took a fancy to one till she saw you in church with me. She thinks you’ve got a look about the eyes that’s like Eleanor, that was her brother’s little girl who died last fall. I guess you’re about as different from her as a child could be, every other way.”

“I suppose Eleanor was an awful good, quiet little girl, wasn’t she?” asked Polly, timidly. “Her name sounds kind of still. I don’t believe she ever tore her clothes, did she?”

“I don’t suppose another such good child ever lived, according to Miss Hetty’s ideas,” said Mrs. Manser, dismally. “She’d never been here in town since she was a baby, and the mother’s folks brought her and Bobby, the twin, one summer to Pomeroy Oaks. As I’ve told you, both parents died, leastways they were destroyed in an accident, when the twins were less than a year old.”

“And Bobby lives with his grandpa and grandma now,” said Polly, with the air of reciting an oft-repeated lesson, “and folks say that saw him when he was here last winter that he just sits and reads all the time; he doesn’t care for play or being out-doors much; and he never makes a speck of dirt or a mite of noise. And when somebody said what a good child he was, Miss Hetty Pomeroy, she said, ‘Wait till you see Eleanor!’ So anybody can tell what she must have been,” concluded poor little Polly, with a gasping breath.

“And so, of course,” said Mrs. Manser, fixing a forlorn gaze on the little figure in stiffly starched pink gingham, “if you run wild out-doors, picking flowers and chasing round after the live stock and wasting time with the birds the way you’ve been allowed to do here, you’ll lose your chance, that’s all. You came of good folks: your mother was my third cousin and your father was a well-meaning man, though he wasn’t forehanded, and always enjoyed poor health. I’ve brought you up the best I could for over seven years, but I expect nothing but what Miss Hetty’ll send you back when the month’s up.”

“I’ll try real hard not to lose the chance,” said Polly, earnestly. Her eyes shone with an odd mixture of determination and fright; there was, moreover, a decided suggestion of tears, but Mrs. Manser, with her head in her hands again, failed to notice it.

“It isn’t to be supposed you can take Eleanor’s place,” she groaned. “You’re willing to fetch and carry, and you’ve got a fair disposition, but you do hate to stay still. Your father was like that—one of these restless folks.”

Polly’s face was overcast with doubt and trouble, but she stood her ground. “I’ll be just as like Eleanor as ever I can,” she said, slowly. “If I could only ask Miss Pomeroy just what Eleanor would have done every day, I guess I could do the same. But you’ve told me I mustn’t speak about Eleanor, because Miss Pomeroy doesn’t want anybody to.” Polly looked wistfully at Mrs. Manser’s bowed head.

“That makes it harder,” said Polly, when there was no answer to this half-question, save another groan, “but I guess I can manage someway.” Her face looked as nearly stern as was possible for such a combination of soft curves and dimples, but her eyes were misty.

Through the open door the soft air of the April morning blew in to her, and her little body thrilled with the love of the spring, and living, growing out-door friends. But if on her behavior depended the bestowal of Miss Hetty’s princely sum, Manser Farm should have it. In all the ten years of Polly’s life she had never before heard of such a large amount of money, except in arithmetic examples, which, as everybody knows, deal with all things in a bold way, unhampered by probability.

With a final groan, Mrs. Manser rose and went to the door. Then she turned quickly to Polly.

“Here comes Miss Hetty now, up the road,” she said. “Go and make your goodbyes to the folks, child, and put on your hat and jacket and then get your bag, so as not to keep her waiting—she may be in a hurry.”

[TO BE CONTINUED]