Polly and the Princess Part 14

_My dear Nita_ You are a witch fit for the hanging! How did you know--how could you guess!--I was going to send you some of our Pink Ramblers? Only they are not quite blossomed out enough yet. When they are you shall have more than you can hold in your two small hands! But to thank me for them ahead of time! It is just like you! You always were a witch! Why don't you come to see me? I should have been up last visiting day only that the house was full of workmen, and Isabel had engagements, and somebody must stay--I was the somebody!--A visitor! Too bad! Love-- GEORGIANA.

Before the pink roses had lost a petal another box was brought to Miss Sterling's door. Her fingers quivered with hope as she untied the ribbon. The address was in the same firm, open hand. A shimmer of gold met her first glance, but the sc.r.a.p of white she had longed for was missing. Without doubt the pilferer had thwarted her again. She put the yellow beauties into water with half-hearted pleasure. Why couldn't Miss Sniffen let her have her own! She pounded the air with her little impotent fists. She did not go down to tea. Unhappiness and worry are not appetizers.

The next morning it was whispered from room to room that the second card had been filched from Miss Sterling's box of roses. Miss Castlevaine loved so well the transmitting of newsy tidbits, that they were not apt to remain long in one quarter.

"I'd do something about it!" she declared to Miss Major. "It has come to a pretty pa.s.s if our belongings have to be tampered with before we even are allowed to see them! I think somebody ought to tell the president."

The incident, however, pa.s.sed with talk, n.o.body being willing to risk her residence in behalf of Juanita Sterling.

When Polly Dudley heard of it she waxed wrathful.

"I never liked Miss Sniffen," she declared, "and now I just hate her!"

"Polly!" remonstrated Miss Sterling.

"I don't care, I do! I wish mother was on the Board, then I 'd try to make her say something! What business has Miss Sniffen to open your boxes, anyhow? I almost know they came from Mr. Randolph, and that's why she's mad about it!"

"Polly, I hope you won't say that to anybody else. You've no more reason to think he sent them than you have to think King George sent them."

Polly chuckled.

"You haven't--intimated such a thing, have you?--to anybody else, I mean?" The question held an anxious tone.

"Why, no, I guess not," was the slow answer, "except mother. I think I said to mother that probably he was the one."

Miss Sterling shook her head with a tiny scowl. "Your mother must think me an intensely silly woman," she sighed.

"Oh, I didn't say you thought so!" Polly hastened to explain. "I only said I did."

"Please don't even suggest it again," she laughed. "I wish the mystery could be cleared up."

The sender's name was discovered earlier than they had thought possible.

Two days afterwards, Polly rushed in, her face alight, her eyes shining. "Oh, Miss Nita!" she began, and then stopped, suddenly realizing that Mrs. Winslow Teed and Miss Crilly were in the room.

"I didn't know--I thought maybe--you'd go with me to call on Miss Lily--Doodles said--Doodles is in a hurry for me to go," she ended lamely.

Juanita Sterling, amused at the sudden transition, had caught a flash of triumph in Polly's eye and wondered with a fluttering heart what she had come to announce.

"Why can't we go, too?" cried Miss Crilly.

"Miss Lily looks like a refined, cultured person," remarked Mrs.

Winslow Teed.

"Oh, Doodles says she is lovely!" Polly had recovered her equilibrium.

The latest comer at the June Holiday Home received her visitors with shy courtesy. Miss Crilly and Polly soon relieved her of any embarra.s.sment she may have felt, and talk went on blithely.

Several smiling glances thrown across the room by Polly put Miss Sterling's mind in confusion. They might signify much or nothing, yet she found herself missing what was being said around her in wild conjecture as to their meaning. She wanted to carry Polly upstairs with her. Finally she rose to go, and Polly said good-bye, too, in accordance with Miss Sterling's hope.

They went along the corridor together. Polly squeezing her companion's arm with little chuckles of delight.

"You can't guess what I've got to tell you!" she broke out, as soon as they were at a safe distance from Miss Lily's room.

"Sh!" cautioned the other. Talk above a whisper was forbidden in the halls.

"Oh, I'm always forgetting!" breathed Polly.

Once inside the third-floor room the little woman was seized by a pair of eager arms and whirled round and round.

"He did send them! He did! He did! Now what do you think!"

Miss Sterling went suddenly limp and dropped into a chair.

"You don't know--for certain?" she cried. "I do! Mr. Randolph sent you those roses--both boxes!"

The woman felt the flame in her face and turned quickly on pretense of searching for something in her sewing-basket. She was so long about it that Polly began to complain.

"You don't care very much, seems to me! I thought you'd be just as glad as I am!"

"Why, I am glad to find out who sent them, dear, as glad as can be!

But I may as well be sewing on these b.u.t.tons while you are talking.

Now, tell me how you found out--I'm dying to know!" she laughed.

"Well, it's so funny!" Polly resumed. "You see, our Sunday-School is going to send a boy in India to college, and last Sunday we had to tell how we'd earned what we brought. A boy in Chris's cla.s.s, Herbert Ogden, said Mr. Randolph paid him fifteen cents apiece for carrying two boxes of roses to the June Holiday Home. So after Sunday-School Chris went along with him and asked him if he remembered who the boxes were for. He said, 'Oh, yes, because it was such a queer name! They were both directed to Miss Ju-an-i-ta Sterling!' Chris said it was all he could do to keep his face straight. And the boy went on to say he remembered the last name because it made him think of sterling silver! Wasn't that the greatest?"

The exclamations and laughter satisfied even Polly.

"You'll thank him right away, shan't you?" she queried.

"I suppose I ought." sighed the possessor of the roses.

"Don't you want to?" Polly's tone showed her surprise.

"Such notes are hard to write," was the discreet answer. She bent closer over her work than there was any need. Her cheeks were pinking up again.

"I do believe you're growing near-sighted!" declared Polly irrelevantly.

"No, I guess not," she replied calmly. "This b.u.t.ton bothered me--it's all right now," as Polly scrutinized the waist.

"I shouldn't think you'd hate to write to Mr. Randolph. I think he's lovely!"

"I presume he is," Miss Sterling said quietly. "I'm not well acquainted with him, you know."

"I'll write it for you," proposed Polly, "if you'd like me to."

The little woman bending over the blouse caught her breath--to think of missing the writing of that thank-you to Nelson Randolph!

"Oh, no, dear! I won't shirk my duty. It wouldn't look quite the thing for you to do it."