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Page 8
She would come back from the beautiful home of her friend, Bell
Winship, and look about on her own surroundings, never with scorn, or
sense of bitterness,--she was too sensible and sweet-natured for
that,--but with an inward rebellion against the existing state of
things, and a secret determination to create a better one, if God would
only give her power and opportunity. But this pent-up feeling only
showed itself to her mother in bursts of impulsive nonsense, at which
Mrs. Oliver first laughed and then sighed.
"Oh, for a little, little breakfast-table!" Polly would say, as she
flung herself on her mother's couch, and punched the pillows
desperately. "Oh, for a father to say 'Steak, Polly dear?' instead of
my asking, 'Steakorchop?' over and over every morning! Oh, for a
lovely, grown-up, black-haired sister, who would have hundreds of
lovers, and let me stay in the room when they called! Oh, for a tiny
baby brother, fat and dimpled, who would crow, and spill milk on the
tablecloth, and let me sit on the floor and pick up the things he threw
down! But instead of that, a new, big, strange family, different
people every six months, people who don't like each other, and have to
be seated at opposite ends of the table; ladies whose lips tremble with
disappointment if they don't get the second joint of the chicken, and
gentlemen who are sulky if any one else gets the liver. Oh, mamma, I
am sixteen now, and it will soon be time for me to begin taking care of
you; but I warn you, I shall never do it by means of the boarders!"
"Are you so weak and proud, little daughter, as to be ashamed because I
have taken care of you these sixteen years 'by means of the boarders,'
as you say?"
"No, no, mamma! Don't think so badly of me as that. That feeling was
outgrown long ago. Do I not know that it is just as fine and honorable
as anything else in the world, and do I not love and honor you with all
my heart because you do it in so sweet and dignified a way that
everybody respects you for it? But it is n't my vocation. I would
like to do something different, something wider, something lovelier, if
I knew how, and were ever good enough!"
"It is easy to 'dream noble things,' dear, but hard to do them 'all day
long.' My own feeling is, if one reaches the results one is struggling
for, and does one's work as well as it lies in one to do it, that
keeping boarders is as good service as any other bit of the world's
work. One is not always permitted to choose the beautiful or glorious
task. Sometimes all one can do is to make the humble action fine by
doing it 'as it is done in heaven.' Remember, 'they also serve who
only stand and wait.'"
"Yes, mamma," said Polly meekly; "but," stretching out her young arms
hopefully and longingly, "it must be that they also serve who stand and
_dare_, and I 'm going to try that first,--then I 'll wait, if God
wants me to."
"What if God wants you to wait first, little daughter?"
Polly hid her face in the sofa-cushions and did not answer.
CHAPTER II.
FORECASTING THE FUTURE.
Two of Mrs. Oliver's sitting-room windows looked out on the fig-trees,
and the third on a cosy piazza corner framed in passion-vines, where at
the present moment stood a round table holding a crystal bowl of Gold
of Ophir roses, a brown leather portfolio, and a dish of apricots.
Against the table leaned an old Spanish guitar with a yellow ribbon
round its neck, and across the corner hung a gorgeous hammock of
Persian colored threads, with two or three pillows of canary-colored
China silk in one end. A bamboo lounging-chair and a Shaker rocker
completed the picture; and the passer-by could generally see Miss Anita
Ferguson reclining in the one, and a young (but not Wise) man from the
East in the other. It was not always the same young man any more than
the decorations were always of the same color.
"That's another of my troubles," said Polly to her friend Margery
Noble, pulling up the window-shade one afternoon and pointing to the
now empty "cosy corner." "I don't mind Miss Ferguson's sitting there,
though it used always to be screened off for my doll-house, and I love
it dearly; but she pays to sit there, and she ought to do it; besides,
she looks prettier there than any one else. Isn't it lovely? The
other day she had pink oleanders in the bowl, the cushions turned the
pink side up,--you see they are canary and rose-color,--a pink muslin
dress, and the guitar trimmed with a fringe of narrow pink ribbons.
She was a dream, Margery! But she does n't sit there with her young
men when I am at school, nor when I am helping Ah Foy in the
dining-room, nor, of course, when we are at table. She sits there from
four to six in the afternoon and in the evening, the only times I have
with mamma in this room. We are obliged to keep the window closed,
lest we should overhear the conversation. That is tiresome enough in
warm weather. You see the other windows are shaded by the fig-trees,
so here we sit, in Egyptian darkness, mamma and I, during most of the
pleasant afternoons. And if anything ever came of it, we would n't
mind, but nothing ever does. There have been so many young men,--I
could n't begin to count them, but they have worn out the seats of four
chairs,--and why does n't one of them take her away? Then we could
have a nice, plain young lady who would sit quietly on the front steps
with the old people, and who would n't want me to carry messages for
her three times a day."
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