Chapter 10

POLLY ENTERTAINS

“Make up a—what did you say?” asked Ned.

“Make up a verse,” answered Polly, placidly. “As you did the other day when you went out. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh!” Laurie looked somewhat embarrassed and a trifle silly. “Why, you see—we only do that when—when—”

“When we have inspiration,” aided Ned, glibly.

“Yes, that’s it, inspiration! We—we have to have inspiration.”

“I’m sure Antoinette ought to be enough inspiration to any poet,” returned Polly, laughing. “You know you never saw a more beautiful rabbit in your life—lives, I mean.”

Ned looked inquiringly at Laurie. Then he said, “Well, maybe if I close my eyes a minute—” He suited action to word. Polly viewed him with eager interest; Laurie, with misgiving. Finally, after a moment of silent suspense, his eyelids flickered and:

“O Antoinette, most lovely of thy kind!” he declaimed.

“Thou eatest cabbages and watermelon rind!” finished Laurie, promptly.

Polly clapped her hands, but her approval was short-lived. “But she doesn’t eatest watermelon rind,” she declared indignantly. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be at all good for her!”

Laurie grinned. “That’s what we call poetic license,” he explained. “When you make a rhyme, sometimes you’ve got to—to sacrifice truth for—in the interests of—I mean, you’ve got to think of the sound! ‘Kind’ and ‘carrot’ wouldn’t sound right, don’t you see?”

“Well, I’m sure watermelon rind doesn’t sound right, either,” objected Polly; “not for a rabbit. Rabbits have very delicate digestions.”

“We might change it,” offered Ned. “How would this do?

        “O  Antoinette,  more  lovely  than  a  parrot,
        Thou  dost  subsist  on  cabbages  and  carrot.”

“That’s silly,” said Polly, scornfully.

“Poetry usually is silly,” Ned answered.

Laurie, who had been gazing raptly at his shoes, broke forth exultantly. “I’ve got it!” he cried. “Listen!

        “O  Antoinette,  most  beauteous  of  rabbits,
        Be  mine  and  I  will  feed  thee  naught  but  cabbits!”

A brief silence followed. Then Ned asked, “What are cabbits?”

“Cabbits are vegetables,” replied Laurie.

“I never heard of them,” said Polly, wrinkling her forehead.

“Neither did any one else,” laughed Ned. “He just made them up to rhyme with rabbits.”

“A cabbit,” said Laurie, loftily, “is something between a cabbage and a carrot.”

“What does it look like?” giggled Polly.

Laurie blinked. “We-ell, you’ve seen a—you’ve seen an artichoke, haven’t you?” Polly nodded and Laurie blinked again. “And you’ve seen a—a mangel-wurzel?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then I don’t see how I can tell you,” said Laurie, evidently relieved, “because a cabbit is more like a mangel-wurzel than anything else. Of course, it’s not so deciduous, and the shape is different; it’s more obvate than a mangel-wurzel; more—” he swept his hands vaguely in air—“more phenomenal.”

“Oh, dry up,” said Ned, grinning. “How’d you like to have to put up with an idiot like that all your life, Polly? The worst of it is, folks sometimes mistake him for me!”

“Yes, it’s awful, but I manage to bear up under it,” Laurie sighed.

“How did you ever come to think of making those funny rhymes?” Polly asked.

“Oh, we had measles once, about four years ago,” said Ned. “We always had everything together—measles, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, everything. And when we were getting over it they wouldn’t let us read and so we made up rhymes. I forget whose idea it was. I’d make up one line and Laurie would make up the other, or the other way round. The idea was to have the last word of the first line so hard that the other fellow couldn’t rhyme to it. But I guess I only stuck Laurie once. Then the word was lemon.”

“You didn’t really stick me then,” Laurie denied. “I rhymed it with demon. You said they didn’t rhyme, but I showed you a rhyming dictionary that said they did.”

“The dictionary said it was an imperfect rhyme, Laurie, and—”

“Just the same, a rhyme’s a rhyme. Say, Ned, remember the one we made up about Miss Yetter?” Ned nodded and grinned. “Miss Yetter was our nurse. We thought it was pretty clever, but she didn’t like it.

        “When  feeling  ill  send  for  Miss  Yetter.
        If  you  don’t  die,  she’ll  make  you  better.”

“She was quite insulted about it,” laughed Ned, “and told Dad; and he tried to lecture us, but we got laughing so he couldn’t. We made rhymes all the time for a while and nearly drove folks crazy; and finally Dad said if we didn’t stop it he’d whale us. And I said, ‘All right, sir, we’ll try not to do it’; and Laurie, the chump, butted in with, ‘’Cause if we do, we know we’ll rue it!’ We nearly got the licking right then!”

“You are funny!” laughed Polly. “Is your mother—haven’t you—”

“She died when we were kids,” answered Laurie. “I just remember her, but Ned doesn’t.”

“You think you do. You’ve just heard Dad, and nurse talk about her. We were only four when Mother died.”

Laurie looked unconvinced, but didn’t argue the matter. Instead he asked, “Your father’s dead, isn’t he, Polly?”

“Yes, he died when I was eight. He was a dear, and I missed him just terribly. Mother says I look like him. He was very tall and was always laughing. Mother says he laughed so much he didn’t have time for anything else. She means that he wasn’t—wasn’t very successful. We were very poor when he died. But I guess he was lots nicer than he would have been if he had just been—successful. I guess the most successful man in this town is Mr. Sparks, the banker, and no one has ever seen him laugh once. And Uncle Peter was successful, too, I suppose; and he was just as sour and ill-tempered as anything. He wasn’t my real uncle, but I called him that because Mother said it would please him. It didn’t seem to.”

“Was that Mr. Coventry?” asked Laurie. “The mis—I mean the man who lived in the big square house over there?”

“Yes. And I don’t mind your calling him the miser, because that is just what he was. He was Mother’s half-brother, but he didn’t act as if he was even a quarter-brother! He was always just as horrid as he could be. When Father died he wrote Mother to come here and he would provide her with a home. And when we came, we found he meant that Mother was to live here and pay him rent. She didn’t have enough money to do that, and so Uncle Peter made the front of the house into a store and bought some things for her and made her sign a mortgage or something. When he died, we thought maybe he had left Mother a little; but there wasn’t any will, and not much property, either—just the big house on Walnut Street and this place and about two thousand dollars. When the property was divided, Mother got the other heirs to let her have this as her portion of the estate, but she had to pay four hundred and fifty dollars for it. That took about all she had saved and more, and so we haven’t been able to do much to the house yet.”

“It doesn’t look as if it needed much doing to,” said Ned, critically.

“Oh, but it does! It needs a new coat of paint, for one thing. And some of the blinds are broken. And there ought to be a furnace in it. Stoves don’t really keep it warm in winter. Some day we’ll fix it up nicely, though. As soon as I get through high school, I’m going to work and make a lot of money.”

“Attaboy!” approved Ned. “What are you going to do, Polly?”

“I’m learning stenography and typewriting, and Mr. Farmer, the lawyer,—he’s the one who got the others to let Mother have the house when Uncle Peter’s estate was settled,—says he will find a place for me in his office. He’s awfully nice. Some stenographers make lots of money, don’t they?”

“I guess so,” Ned agreed. “There’s a woman in Dad’s office who gets eighteen dollars a week.”

Polly clasped her hands delightedly. “Maybe I wouldn’t get that much, though. I guess Mr. Farmer doesn’t pay his stenographer very high wages. Maybe I’d get twelve dollars, though. Don’t you think I might?”

“Sure!” said Laurie. “Don’t you let any one tell you any different. Didn’t folks think that your Uncle Peter left more money than was found, Polly?”

“Oh, yes; but no one really knew. The lawyers looked everywhere. If he did have any more, he must have hidden it away pretty well. They looked all through the house and dug holes in the cellar floor. It was very exciting. Mother thinks he lost what money he had speculating in stocks and things. He used to go to New York about four times a year. No one knew what he did there, not even Hilary; but Mother thinks he went to see men who deal in stocks and that they got his money away from him.”

“Who is Hilary?” Laurie inquired.

“Hilary was a colored man that Uncle had had a long time. It seemed to me that if Uncle had had much money, Hilary would have known about it; and he didn’t.”

“Where is he now? Hilary, I mean,” added Laurie, somewhat unnecessarily.

“I don’t know. He went away a little while after Uncle Peter died. He said he was going to New York, I think.”

“You don’t suppose he took the money with him, do you? I mean—”

“Oh no!” Polly seemed quite horrified. “Hilary was just as honest as honest! Why, Uncle Peter died owing him almost forty dollars and Hilary never got a cent of it! The lawyers were too mean for anything!”

“There’s a fellow named Starling living there now,” Laurie said. “His father’s rented the house for three years. Bob says that he’s going to find the money and give it to your mother.”

Polly laughed. “Oh, I wish that he would! But I guess if the lawyers couldn’t find it he never will. Lawyers, they say, can find money when nobody else can! Is he nice?”

“Bob? Yes, he’s a dandy chap. You ought to know him, Polly; he’s your next-door neighbor.”

“Back-door neighbor, you mean,” interpolated Ned.

“I think I saw him in the garden one day,” said Polly. “His father is an engineer, Mae Ferrand says, and he’s building a big bridge for the railway. Or maybe it’s a tunnel. I forget.”

“Is Mae Something the girl with the molasses-candy hair you were with at the high school game?” Laurie asked.

“Yes, but her hair isn’t like molasses candy. It’s perfectly lovely hair. It’s like—like diluted sunshine!”

Laurie whistled. “Gee! Did you get that, Neddie? Well, anyway, I like dark hair better.”

“Oh, I don’t! I’d love to have hair like Mae’s. And, what do you think, she likes my hair better than her own!”

“Don’t blame her,” said Laurie. “What do you say, Ned?”

“I say I’ve got to beat it back and get into football togs. What time is it?”

“Look at your own watch, you lazy loafer. Well, come on. I say, Polly, would your mother let you go to the game with me Saturday? That is, if you want to, of course.”

“Oh, I’d love to! But—I’ll ask her, anyway. And if she says I may, would you mind if Mae went too? We usually go together to the games.”

“Not a bit. I’ll be around again before Saturday and see what she says.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she said yes,” remarked Polly. “I think she must like you boys. Anyway, you’re the first of the Hillman’s boys she has ever let me invite out here.”

“Really? Bully for her! Wait till I say farewell to Antoinette, ‘most beauteous of rabbits!’ What does she twitch her nose like that for?”

“I think she’s asking for some cabbits,” replied Polly, gravely.

“She’s making faces at you, you chump,” said Ned, rudely. “Come on.” They returned through the little living-room, empty save for a big black cat asleep in a rocking-chair, and found Mrs. Deane serving the first of the afternoon trade in the shop beyond. They said good afternoon to her very politely, and Polly went to the door with them. Outside on the walk, Ned nudged Laurie, and they paused side by side and gravely removed their caps.

“We give you thanks and say farewell, Miss Polly.”

“The visit’s been, indeed, most jolly!”