CHAPTER I

AN INTERRUPTED STORY

Although it was only five o’clock, and Manser Farm stood on a hill so that its windows caught the last gleam of the sun on a pleasant afternoon, the garret was growing dark.

“Is it five or six days it’s been raining without any stop?” inquired Mrs. Ramsdell, as she dropped the lid of her horse-hair trunk and turned the key in the lock.

“It’s only three days come six o’clock to-night,” said Aunty Peebles in her cheery treble. “Don’t you recall we were just going down to supper Monday when we heard the first drops on the tin roof? And this is only Thursday.”

“Well, it seems like two weeks, that’s all I’ve got to say about it,” grumbled Mrs. Ramsdell, as she rose stiffly and whisked her black alpaca skirt back and forth till every speck of dust had flown away from it. Most of the specks settled on Grandma Manser who sat tranquilly knitting in her corner by the south window.

“Do you know where Polly is?” suddenly demanded Mrs. Ramsdell, bending over the knitter and shouting fiercely in her ear. “Why isn’t she up here this dull afternoon? The only bright thing there is in this house! What’s your daughter-in-law keeping her downstairs for?”

“Polly?” repeated Grandma Manser, gently. She had evidently heard only part of the gusty speech. “Polly told me she was planning to be out in the woodshed, to help Uncle Sam Blodgett saw and split, this afternoon. She said she’d be up to recite a piece to us before supper.”

“H’m! I should think it was high time she came, then,” said Mrs. Ramsdell, crossly. But after a minute her wrinkled face grew still more wrinkled with the smile that broke over it as she heard a clattering sound on the garret stairs. A second later a rosy face about which danced a mop of short brown curls peeped around the old bureau which hid the stairway from the group gathered near the windows.

“You’re a naughty little piece, that’s what you are, to stay down in the woodshed with Sam’l Blodgett, instead of coming up here to entertain us,” cried Mrs. Ramsdell, with twinkling eyes that contradicted the severity of her tone. “What have you been doing down there, I’d like to know?”

“I’ve been listening to war stories,” said Polly Prentiss, coming out from behind the bureau. “I’ve been hearing about Uncle Blodgett’s nephew who died down South and ‘though but nineteen years of age displayed great bravery on the field of battle.’ That’s on his tombstone,” said Polly, seating herself on a little stool close to Grandma Manser and reaching out her hand to pat Ebenezer, the big Maltese cat.

“Pretty doings!” grumbled Mrs. Ramsdell, but she smiled at Polly as she went over to the rocking chair by Aunty Peebles. “We old folks have been taking things out of our trunks and putting ’em back again just to keep up heart till you came, except grandma there; she’s kept to her knitting, so’s not to disturb Ebenezer of his nap, I suppose.”

“Ebenezer’s a splendid cat, if he does like to sleep most of the time, and looks like Mrs. Manser’s old sack that the moths got into,” said Polly, with a laugh. “Oh, did any of you know there was a visitor downstairs?--that Miss Pomeroy with the sharp eyes. Seemed as if she’d look right through me last Sunday, after church. I guess she’s pleasant, though.”

“Folks can afford to be pleasant when they own property and have good clothes to their backs.” said Mrs. Ramsdell. “I don’t know as Hetty Pomeroy’s disposition would be any better than some other folks’ if ’twas tried in the furnace. Her father had a high temper, I’ve heard.”

“She’s had her trials, Miss Hetty has,” said Aunty Peebles, gently. “She’s all alone in the world now, excepting for Arctura Green that’s always worked in the family. You know she was to have had her brother’s little girl to adopt, and the child died of diphtheria last fall. I understand it was a great grief to Miss Hetty.”

“What’s she here for in all this rain?” questioned Mrs. Ramsdell, sharply.

“Why, it’s almost stopped raining,” said Polly stroking Ebenezer, who stretched out one paw and curved it round her finger without opening his eyes. “She drove up to the shed to ask Uncle Blodgett to put her horse in the barn. Then I showed her the way to the sitting-room and, she said she had an errand with Mrs. Manser, and I’d better run away soon as I’d called her. I should have, anyway,” said Polly, nodding at each of her old friends in turn, “for I was anxious to hurry up here, and tell you about the things Uncle Blodgett’s been telling me.”

Polly’s quick eyes had seen a half-frightened glance exchanged between Mrs. Ramsdell and Aunty Peebles when she spoke of Miss Hetty’s errand, but as neither of the old ladies seemed disposed to speak when she paused, Polly went on, thinking “it’s just one of their mysteries, I suppose.”

“First, he recited me a poem,” said Polly; “at least, he really recited it to himself, ‘just to keep his hand in.’ I’m not very good about remembering poems, but this was by Dr. Goldsmith, Uncle Blodgett said, and it was all about a Madam Blaize. I asked him the name twice, to be sure.”

“Never heard of either of ’em,” said Mrs. Ramsdell. “Must both be fictitious persons. I wonder Samu’l Blodgett never recites poems to us of an evening. I must say.”

“’Twas only because I happened to be there, picking up the chips,” exclaimed Polly; “and I don’t know whether Dr. Goldsmith and Madam Blaize were fick--the kind of persons you said--but she was a grand lady in the poem. It’s funny, too,” said Polly, showing her dimples; “in one place it says ‘The king himself has followed her when she has walked before.’ Of course, he’d have to; isn’t that funny?”

“What else did he recite?” demanded Mrs. Ramsdell.

“He didn’t recite anything else,” said Polly, releasing her fingers from Ebenezer’s clasp, and springing to her feet, “but he told me a very exciting adventure he had once, and I can act it all out for you. You see, he was going home through some thick woods to his log-hut. We’ll play the bureau is the hut, and just on the edge of the woods. If you and Aunty Peebles will move your rocking chairs a little farther apart you’ll make a splendid edge of the woods,” said Polly to Mrs. Ramsdell, in a coaxing tone, “then I can come through between.”

“Anything to help out,” said the old lady, quickly hitching her chair away from Aunty Peebles.

“Now I think,” said Polly, squinting up her eyes, “that Grandma Manser is in just about the right place for the panther.”

“Mercy on us, it’s a wild beast tale,” chuckled Mrs. Ramsdell.

“Grandma Manser, can you snarl like a panther?” asked Polly, bending over the quiet knitter, whose soft eyes had been following the little girl’s movements. “It’s in Uncle Blodgett’s adventure, and I’m going to act it all out, and speak so slow and clear, you’ll hear everything.”

“My yarn’s more used to snarling than I am, dear child,” said Grandma Manser, smiling up at the earnest face, “but I’ll do my best. You let me know the right minute, someway.”

“When I point my right arm at you with this stick in my hand, it’s a gun that never missed,” explained Polly to her assistants, “that’ll be the time for you to snarl, please.”

Grandma Manser nodded cheerfully, and Polly, gun in hand, ran to her position behind Mrs. Ramsdell and Aunty Peebles.

“As I was walking slowly along,” said Polly, with her lips pouted out in imitation of Uncle Blodgett, and the gun over her shoulder, “suddenly off to the left, not more than a dozen rods from the house, what should I see, but--”

“Mary!” came a querulous voice from the foot of the garret stairs. “Mary Prentiss! Are you up there?”

“Yes’m,” answered Polly, as the gun dropped to the floor, and Grandma Manser, fearing she had mistaken the signal, gave a very mild sound, meant for a fierce snarl. “Yes’m, I’m here. Do you want me downstairs?”

“No, I’ll mount; I’m used to trouble, and they might as well hear the news at once,” said the fretful voice, drawing nearer. The stairs creaked under the slow steps; the little company in the garret waited; disappointment was on Polly’s face, but the old people looked sad and anxious.

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.