"But you really can't housekeep, Polly. Of course I'd like to please you, and father said himself you were to help me in the house. But to manage everything--why, it frightens me, and I am two years older." "But you have so very little spirit, darling. Now it doesn't frighten me a bit, and that's why I'm so certain I shall succeed splendidly. Look here, Nell, let me speak to father, myself; if he says 'yes,' you won't object, will you?" "Of course not," said Helen. "You are a darling--I'll soon bring father round. Now, shall we go to bed?--I am so sleepy." The next morning at breakfast Polly electrified her brothers and sisters by the very meek way in which she appealed to Helen on all occasions. "Do you think, Nell, that I ought to have any more of this marmalade on fresh bread? I ate half a pot yesterday on three or four slices of hot bread from the oven, and felt quite a dizzy stupid feeling in my head afterwards." "Of course, how could you expect it to agree with you, Polly?" said Helen, looking up innocently from her place at the tea-tray. "Had better have a little of this stale bread-and-butter then, dear?" proceeded Polly in a would-be anxious tone. "Yes, if you will, dear. But you never like stale bread-and-butter." "I'll eat it if you wish me to, Helen," answered Polly, in a very meek, good little voice. The two boys began to chuckle, and even Dr. Maybright looked at his second daughter in a puzzled, abstracted way. Helen, too, colored slightly, and wondered what Polly meant. But the young lady herself munched her stale bread with the most immovable of faces, and even held up the slice for Helen to scrutinize, with the gentle, good little remark--"Have I put too much butter on it, Nell? It isn't right to waste nice good butter, is it?" "Oh, Polly, how dreadful you are?" said Fly. "What do you mean?" said Polly, fiercely. She dropped her meek manners, gave one quick glare at the small speaker, and then half turning her back on her, said in the gentlest of voices, "What would you like me to do this morning, Helen? Shall I look over my history lesson for an hour, and then practise scales on the piano?" "You may do just as you please, as far as I am concerned," replied Helen, who felt that this sort of obedience was far worse for the others than open rebellion. "I thought you wanted to see father, Polly. He has just gone into his study, and perhaps he will give you ten minutes, if you go to him at once." This speech of Helen's caused Polly to forget her role of the meek, obedient martyr. Her brow cleared. "Thank you for reminding me, Nell," she said, in her natural voice, and for a moment later she was knocking at the Doctor's study door. "Come in," he said. And when the untidy head and somewhat neglected person of his second daughter appeared, Dr. Maybright walked towards her. "I am going out, Polly, do you want me?" he said.