Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books txt] 📗
- Author: L. T. Meade
Book online «Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books txt] 📗». Author L. T. Meade
“Our travelers are very hungry, Polly,” he said, “and—and—very tired. Yes, I see you have prepared things nicely for them. But first of all they must have supper, and after that I shall prescribe bed. Welcome, my dear children, to Sleepy Hollow! May it be a happy home to you both.”
“Thank you,” said the girl.
She had a pale face, a quantity of long light hair, and dreamy, sleepy eyes; the boy, on the contrary, had an alert and watchful expression; he clung to his sister, and looked in her face when she spoke.
“Do tell us what you are called,” said Polly. “We are all just dying to know. Oh! I trust, I do trust that you are really Paul and Virginia. How perfectly lovely it would be if those were your real names.”
The tall girl looked full into Polly’s eyes, a strange, sweet, wistful light filled her own, her words came out musically.
“I am Flower,” she said, “and this is David. I am thirteen years old, and David is eight. Father sent us away because after mother died there was no one to take care of us.”
A sigh of intense interest and sympathy fell from the lips of all the young Maybrights.
“Come upstairs, Flower; we know quite well how to be sorry for you,” said Helen.
She took the strange girl’s hand, and led her up the broad staircase.
“I’ll stay below,” said David. “I’m not the least tired, and my hands don’t want washing. Who’s the jolliest here? Couldn’t we have a game of ball? I haven’t played ball since I left Ballarat. Flower wouldn’t let me. She said I might when I came here. She spoke about coming here all the[Pg 85] time, and she always wanted to see your mother. She cried the whole of last night because your mother was dead. Now has nobody got a ball, and won’t the jolliest begin?”
“I’ll play with you, David,” said Polly. “Now catch; there! once, twice, thrice. Aren’t you starving? I want my tea, if you don’t.”
“Flower said I wasn’t to ask for anything to eat now that your mother is dead,” responded David. “She said it wasn’t likely we’d stay, but that while we did I was to be on my good behavior. I hate being on my good behavior; but Flower’s an awful mistress. Yes, of course, I’m starving.”
“Well, come in to tea, then,” said Polly, laughing. “Perhaps you will stay, and anyhow we are glad to have you for a little. Children, please don’t stare so hard.”
“I don’t mind,” said David. “They may stare if it pleases them; I rather like it.”
“Like being stared at!” repeated Firefly, whose own sensitive little nature resented the most transient glance.
“Yes,” responded David, calmly; “it shows that I’m admired; and I know that I’m a very handsome boy.”
So he was, with dark eyes like a gipsy, and a splendid upright figure and bearing. Far from being the barbarian of Polly’s imagination, he had some of the airs and graces of a born aristocrat. His calm remarks and utter coolness astonished the little Maybrights, who rather shrank away from him, and left him altogether to Polly’s patronage.
At this moment Helen and the young Australian girl came down together. David instantly trotted up to his sister.
“She thinks that perhaps we’ll stay, Flower,” pointing with his finger at Polly, “and in that case I needn’t keep up my company manners, need I?”
“But you must behave well, David,” responded Flower, “or the English nation will fancy we are not civilized.”
She smiled in a lovely languid way at her brother, and looked round with calm indifference at the boys and girls who pressed close to her.
“Come and have tea,” said Helen.
She placed Flower at her right hand. The Doctor took the head of the table, and the meal progressed more or less in silence. Flower was too lazy or too delicate to eat much. David spent all his time in trying to make Firefly laugh, and in avoiding the Doctor’s penetrating glance. The Maybrights were too astonished at the appearance of their guests to feel thoroughly at ease. Polly had a sensation of things being somehow rather flat, and the Doctor wondered much in his inward soul how this new experiment would work.
It did not work well as far as Polly was concerned. Whatever she was at home, whatever her faults and failings, whatever her wild vagaries, or unreasonable moods, she somehow or other always managed to be first. First in play, first in naughtiness, first at her lessons, the best musician, the best artist, the best housekeeper, the best originator of sports and frolics on all occasions, was Polly Maybright. From this position, however, she was suddenly dethroned. It was quite impossible for Polly to be first when Flower was in the room.
Flower Dalrymple had the ways and manners of a young queen. She was imperious, often ungracious, seldom obliging, but she had a knack of getting people to think first of her, of saying the sort of things which drew attention, and of putting every other little girl with whom she came into contact completely in the shade.
In reality, Polly was a prettier girl than Flower. Her eyes were brighter, her features more regular. But just as much in reality Polly could not hold a candle to Flower, for she had a sort of a languorous, slumberous, grace, which exactly suited her name; there was a kind of etherealness about her, an absolutely out-of-the-common look, which made people glance at her again and again, each time to discover how very lovely she was.
Flower was a perfect contrast to David, being as fair as he was dark. Her face had a delicate, creamy shade, her eyes were large and light blue, the lashes and eyebrows being only a shade or two darker than her long, straight rather dull-looking, yellow hair. She always wore her hair straight down her back; she was very willowy and pliant in figure, and had something of the grace and coloring of a daffodil.
Flower had not been a week in the Maybright family before she contrived that all the arrangements in the house should be more or less altered to suit her convenience. She made no apparent complaint, and never put her wishes into words, still she contrived to have things done to please her. For instance, long before that week was out, Polly found herself deprived of the seat she had always occupied at meals by her father’s side. Flower liked to sit near the Doctor, therefore she did so; she liked to slip her hand into his between the courses, and to look into his face with her wide-open, pathetic, sweet eyes. Flower could not touch coffee at breakfast, therefore by common consent the whole family adopted tea. In the morning-room Flower established herself in mother’s deep arm-chair, hitherto consecrated by all rights and usages to Helen. As to Polly, she was simply dethroned from her pedestal, her wittiest remarks fell flat,[Pg 87] her raciest stories were received with languid interest. What were they compared to the thrilling adventures which the young Australian could tell when she pleased! Not, indeed, that Flower often pleased, she was not given to many words, her nature was thoroughly indolent and selfish, and only for one person would she ever really rouse and exert herself. This person was David; he worshipped her, and she loved him as deeply as it was in her nature to love any one. To all appearance, however, it mattered very little who, or how Flower loved. On all hands, every one fell in love with her. Even Polly resigned her favorite seat for her, even Helen looked without pain at mother’s beloved chair when Flower’s lissome figure filled it. The younger children were forever offering flowers and fruit at her shrine. Nurse declared her a bonny, winsome thing, and greatest honor of all, allowed her to play with little Pearl, the baby, for a few minutes, when the inclination seized her. Before she was a week in the house, not a servant in the place but would have done anything for her, and even the Doctor so far succumbed to her charms as to pronounce her a gracious and lovable creature.
“Although I can’t make her out,” he often said to himself, “I have an odd instinct which tells me that there is the sleeping lioness or the wild-cat hidden somewhere beneath all that languid, gracious carelessness. Poor little girl! she has managed to captivate us all, but I should not be surprised if she turned out more difficult and troublesome to manage than the whole of my seven daughters put together.”
As Flower and David had been sent from Australia especially to be under the care and guidance of Mrs. Maybright, the Doctor felt more and more uncertain as to the expediency of keeping the children.
“It is difficult enough to manage a girl like Polly,” he said to himself; “but when another girl comes to the house who is equally audacious and untamed—for my Polly is an untamed creature when all’s said and done—how is a poor half-blind old doctor like myself to keep these two turbulent spirits in order? I am dreadfully afraid the experiment won’t work; and yet—and yet £400 a year is sadly needed to add to the family purse just now.”
The Doctor was pacing up and down his library while he meditated. The carpet in this part of the room was quite worn from the many times he walked up and down it. Like many another man, when he was perplexed or anxious he could not keep still. There came a light tap at the library door.
“Come in!” said the Doctor; and to his surprise Flower, looking more like a tall yellow daffodil than ever, in a soft dress of creamy Indian silk, opened the door and took a step or two into the room.
She looked half-shy, half-bold—a word would have sent[Pg 88] her flying, or a word drawn her close to the kind Doctor’s side.
“Come here, my little girl,” he said, “and tell me what you want.”
Flower would have hated any one else to speak of her as a little girl, but she pushed back her hair now, and looked with less hesitation and more longing at the Doctor.
“I thought you’d be here—I ventured to come,” she said.
“Yes, yes; there’s no venturing in the matter. Take my arm, and walk up and down with me.”
“May I, really?”
“Of course you may, puss. Now I’ll warrant anything you have walked many a carpet bare with your own father. See! this is almost in holes; those are Polly’s steps, these are mine.”
“Oh—yes—well, father isn’t that sort of man. I’ll take your arm if I may, Doctor. Thank you. I didn’t think—I don’t exactly know how to say what I want to say.”
“Take time, my dear child; and it is no matter how you put the words.”
“When I heard that there was no mother here, I did not want to stay long. That was before I knew you. Now—I came to say it—I do want to stay, and so does David.”
“But you don’t really know me at all, Flower.”
“Perhaps not really; but still enough to want to stay. May I stay?”
Flower’s charming face looked up inquiringly.
“May I stay?” she repeated, earnestly. “I do wish it!—very much indeed.”
Dr. Maybright was silent for a moment.
“I was thinking about this very point when you knocked at the door,” he said, presently. “I was wondering if you two children could stay. I want to keep you, and yet I own I am rather fearful of the result. You see, there are so many motherless girls and boys in this house.”
“But we are motherless, too; you should be sorry for us; you should wish to keep us.”
“I am very sorry for you. I have grown to a certain extent already to love you. You interest me much; still, I must be just to you and to my own children. You are not a common, everyday sort of girl, Flower. I don’t wish to flatter you, and I am not going to say whether you are nice or the reverse. But there is no harm in my telling you that you are out of the common. It is probable that you may be extremely difficult to manage, and it is possible that your disposition may—may clash with those of some of the members of my own household. I don’t say that this will be the case, mind, only it is possible. In that case, what would you expect me to do?”
“To keep me,” said Flower,
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