"You can come and be naughty in my bachelor den, Polly," said Mr. Bird, smiling. "Mrs. Bird does n"t waste any girlish frills and poetic decorations and mystical friezes on her poor brother-in-law! He is done up in muddy browns, as befits his age and s.e.x."
Polly insisted on beginning her work the very next afternoon; but she had strength only for three appointments a week, and Mrs. Bird looked doubtfully after her as she walked away from the house with a languid gait utterly unlike her old buoyant step.
Edgar often came in the evenings, as did Tom and Blanche Mills, and Milly Foster; but though Polly was cheerful and composed, she seldom broke into her old flights of nonsense.
On other nights, when they were alone, she prepared for her hours of story-telling, and in this she was wonderfully helped by Mr. Bird"s suggestions and advice; for he was a student of literature in many languages, and delighted in bringing his treasures before so teachable a pupil.
"She has a sort of genius that astonishes me," said he one morning, as he chatted with Mrs. Bird over the breakfast-table.
Polly had excused herself, and stood at the farther library window, gazing up the street vaguely and absently, as if she saw something beyond the hills and the bay. Mrs. Bird"s heart sank a little as she looked at the slender figure in the black dress. There were no dimples about the sad mouth, and was it the dress, or was she not very white these latter days?--so white that her hair encircled her face with absolute glory, and startled one with its color.
"It is a curious kind of gift," continued Mr. Bird, glancing at his morning" papers. "She takes a long tale of Hans Andersen"s, for instance, and after an hour or two, when she has his idea fully in mind, she shows me how she proposes to tell it to the younger children at the Orphan Asylum. She clasps her hands over her knees, bends forward toward the firelight, and tells the story with such simplicity and earnestness that I am always glad she is looking the other way and cannot see the tears in my eyes. I cried like a school-girl last night over "The Ugly Duckling." She has natural dramatic instinct, a great deal of facial expression, power of imitation, and an almost unerring taste in the choice of words, which is unusual in a girl so young and one who has been so imperfectly trained. I give her an old legend or some fragment of folk-lore, and straight-way she dishes it up for me as if it had been bone of her bone and marrow of her marrow; she knows just what to leave out and what to put in, somehow. You had one of your happy inspirations about that girl, Margaret,--she is a born story-teller. She ought to wander about the country with a lute under her arm. Is the Olivers" house insured?"
"Good gracious, Jack! you have a kangaroo sort of mind! How did you leap to that subject? I"m sure I don"t know, but what difference does it make, anyway?"
"A good deal of difference," he answered nervously, looking into the library (yes, Polly had gone out); "because the house, the furniture, and the stable were burned to the ground last night,--so the morning paper says."
Mrs. Bird rose and closed the doors. "That does seem too dreadful to be true," she said. "The poor child"s one bit of property, her only stand-by in case of need! Oh, it can"t be burned; and, if it is, it must be insured. I "m afraid a second blow would break her down completely just now, when she has not recovered from the first."
Mr. Bird went out and telegraphed to Dr. George Edgerton;--
Is Oliver house burned? What was the amount of insurance, if any?
Answer.
JOHN BIRD.
At four o"clock the reply came:--
House and outbuildings burned. No insurance. Have written particulars. Nothing but piano and family portraits saved.
GEORGE EDGERTON.
In an hour another message, marked "Collect," followed the first one:--
House burned last night. Defective flue. No carelessness on part of servants or family. Piano, portraits, ice-cream freezer, and wash-boiler saved by superhuman efforts of husband. Have you any instructions? Have taken to my bed. Accept love and sympathy.
CLEMENTINE CHADWICK GEEENWOOD.
So it was true. The buildings were burned, and there was no insurance.
I know you will say there never is, in stories where the heroine"s courage is to be tested, even if the narrator has to burn down the whole township to do it satisfactorily. But to this objection I can make only this answer: First, that this house really did burn down; secondly, that there really was no insurance; and thirdly, if this combination of circ.u.mstances did not sometimes happen in real life, it would never occur to a story-teller to introduce it as a test for heroes and heroines.
"Well," said Mrs. Bird despairingly, "Polly must be told. Now, will you do it, or shall I? Of course you want me to do it! Men never have any courage about these things, nor any tact either."
At this moment the subject of conversation walked into the room, hat and coat on, and an unwonted color in her cheeks. Edgar n.o.ble followed behind. Polly removed her hat and coat leisurely, sat down on a ha.s.sock on the hearth rug, and ruffled her hair with the old familiar gesture, almost forgotten these latter days.
Mrs. Bird looked warningly at the tell-tale yellow telegrams in Mr.
Bird"s lap, and strove to catch his eye and indicate to his dull masculine intelligence the necessity of hiding them until they could devise a plan of breaking the sad news.
Mrs. Bird"s glance and Mr. Bird"s entire obliviousness were too much for Polly"s gravity. To their astonishment she burst into a peal of laughter.
""My lodging is on the cold, cold ground, And hard, very hard is my fare!""
she sang, to the tune of "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms." "So you know all about it, too?"
"How did you hear it?" gasped Mrs. Bird.
"I bought the evening paper to see if that lost child at the asylum had been found. Edgar jumped on the car, and seemed determined that I should not read the paper until I reached home. He was very kind, but slightly bungling in his attentions. I knew then that something was wrong, but just what was beyond my imagination, unless Jack Howard had been expelled from Harvard, or Bell Winship had been lost at sea on the way home; so I persisted in reading, and at last I found the fatal item. I don"t know whether Edgar expected me to faint at sight! I "m not one of the fainting sort!"
"I "m relieved that you can take it so calmly. I have been shivering with dread all day, and Jack and I have been quarreling as to which should break it to you."
"Break it to me!" echoed Polly, in superb disdain. "My dear Fairy G.o.dmother, you must think me a weak sort of person! As if the burning down of one patrimonial estate could shatter my nerves! What is a pa.s.sing home or so? Let it burn, by all means, if it likes. "He that is down need fear no fall.""
"It is your only property," said Mr. Bird, trying to present the other side of the case properly, "and it was not insured."
"What of that?" she asked briskly. "Am I not housed and fed like a princess at the present moment? Have I not two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, and am I not earning twenty-five dollars a month with absolute regularity? Avaunt, cold Fear!"
"How was it that the house was not insured?" asked Mr. Bird.
"I "m sure I don"t know. It was insured once upon a time, if I remember right; when it got uninsured, I can"t tell. How do things get uninsured, Mr. Bird?"
"The insurance lapses, of course, if the premium is n"t regularly paid."
"Oh, that would account for it!" said Polly easily. "There were quant.i.ties of things that were n"t paid regularly, though they were always paid in course of time. You ought to have asked me if we were insured, Edgar,--you were the boy of the house,--insurance is n"t a girl"s department. Let me see the telegrams, please."
They all laughed heartily over Mrs. Greenwood"s characteristic message.
"Think of "husband" bearing that aged ice-cream freezer and that leaky boiler to a place of safety!" exclaimed Polly. ""All that was left of them, left of six hundred!" Well, my family portraits, piano, freezer, and boiler will furnish a humble cot very nicely in my future spinster days. By the way, the land did n"t burn up, I suppose, and that must be good for something, is n"t it?"
"Rather," answered Edgar; "a corner lot on the best street in town, four blocks from the new hotel site! It"s worth eighteen hundred or two thousand dollars, at least."
"Then why do you worry about me, good people? I "m not a heroine. If I were sitting on the curbstone without a roof to my head, and did n"t know where I should get my dinner, I should cry! But I smell my dinner" (here she sniffed pleasurably), "and I think it "s chicken!
You see, it"s so difficult for me to realize that I "m a pauper, living here, a pampered darling in the halls of wealth, with such a large income rolling up daily that I shall be a prey to fortune-hunters by the time I am twenty! Pshaw! don"t worry about me! This is just the sort of diet I have been accustomed to from my infancy! I rather enjoy it!"
Whereupon Edgar recited an impromptu nonsense verse:--
"There "s a queer little maiden named Polly, Who always knows when to be jolly.
When ruined by fire Her spirits rise higher.
This most inconsistent Miss Polly."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CANDLE CALLED PATIENCE.
The burning of the house completely prostrated Mrs. Clementine Churchill Chadwick Greenwood, who, it is true, had the actual shock of the conflagration to upset her nervous system, though she suffered no financial loss.
Mr. Greenwood was heard to remark that he wished he could have foreseen that the house would burn down, for now he should have to move anyway, and if he had known that a few months before, why--