Polly: A Christmas RecollectionPage, Thomas Nelson
General
Polly: A Christmas Recollection
Page, Thomas Nelson
Christmas stories
Bob used to wonder in a vague, boyish way where the child got her
beauty, for the Colonel weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and
was as ugly as a red head and thirty or forty years of Torm's
mint-juleps piled on a somewhat reckless college career could make
him; but one day, when the Colonel was away from home, Charity showed
him a daguerreotype of a lady, which she got out of the top drawer
of the Colonel's big secretary with the brass lions on it, and it
looked exactly like Polly. It had the same great big dark eyes and
the same soft white look, though Polly was stouter; for she was a
great tomboy, and used to run wild over the place with Bob, climbing
cherry-trees, fishing in the creek, and looking as blooming as a
rose, with her hair all tangled over her pretty head, until she grew
quite large, and the Colonel got her a tutor. He thought of sending
her to a boarding-school, but the night he broached the subject he
raised such a storm, and Polly was in such a tempest of tears, that
he gave up the matter at once. It was well he did so, for Polly and
Charity cried all night and Torm was so overcome that even next
morning he could not bring the Colonel his shaving-water, and he
had to shave with cold water for the first time in twenty years. He
therefore employed a tutor. Most people said the child ought to have
had a governess, and one or two single ladies of forgotten age in
the neighborhood delicately hinted that they would gladly teach her;
but the Colonel swore that he would have no women around him, and he
would be eternally condemned if any should interfere with Polly; so he
engaged Mr. Cranmer, and invited Bob to come over and go to school to
him also, which he did; for his mother, who had up to that time taught
him herself, was very poor, and was unable to send him to school, her
husband, who was the Colonel's fourth cousin, having died largely
indebted, and all of his property, except a small farm adjoining the
Colonel's, and a few negroes, having gone into the General Court.
Bob had always been a great favorite with the Colonel, and ever since
he was a small boy he had been used to coming over and staying with him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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