It was dull in Polly's room. The naughtiest child cannot cry all the time, nor sulk when left quite to herself, and although, whenever Mrs. Cameron appeared on the scene, the sulks and temper both returned in full force, Polly spent many long and miserable hours perfectly distracted with the longing to find something to do. The only books in the room were Helen's little Bible, a copy of "Robinson Crusoe," and the Dictionary. For obvious reasons Polly did not care to read the Bible at present. "Robinson Crusoe" she knew already by heart, but found it slightly amusing trying to make something of the sentences read backwards. The Dictionary was her final resource, and she managed to pass many tedious hours working straight through it page after page. She had got as far as M, and life was becoming insupportable, when about the middle of the day, on Monday, she was startled by a cautious and stealthy noise, and also by a shadow falling directly on her page. She looked up quickly; there was the round and radiant face of Maggie glued to the outside of the window, while her voice came in, cautious but piercing, "Open the window quick, Miss Polly, I'm a-falling down." Polly flew to the rescue, and in a moment Maggie was standing in the room. In her delight at seeing a more genial face than Aunt Maria's, Polly flung her arms round Maggie and kissed her. "How good of you to come!" she exclaimed. "And you must not go away again. Where will you hide when Aunt Maria comes to visit me? Under the bed, or in this cupboard?" "Not in neither place," responded Maggie, who was still gasping and breathless, and whose brown winsey frock showed a disastrous tear from hem to waist. "Not in neither place," she proceeded, "for I couldn't a-bear it any longer, and you ain't going to stay in this room no longer, Miss Polly; I nearly brained myself a-clinging on to the honeysuckle, and the ivy-roots, but here I be, and now we'll both go down the ladder and run away." "Run away--oh!" said Polly, clasping her hands, and a great flood of rose-color lighting up her face. She ran to the window. The housemaid's step-ladder stood below, but Polly's window was two or three feet above. "We'll manage with a bit of rope and the bedroom towels," said Maggie, eagerly. "It's nothing at all, getting down--it's what I did was the danger. Now, be quick, Miss Polly; let's get away while they're at dinner."