Family -- Juvenile fiction; Fathers -- Death -- Juvenile fiction; Financial security -- Juvenile fiction
"Yes, indeed; goes to sleep like a good baby whenever she is bidden.
Why, you're better already! You didn't feel like playing house when I
saw you after dinner, did you?" cried Rob, delighted.
Polly shook her head with happy solemnity. "I never had such a nice
doll," she said.
Mr. Grey came in looking pale and tired, but he smiled at white little
Polly, and said, as he tipped up her chin: "Rob says you're little
Polly Flinders who sat among the cinders, but I think she's turned you
into a little coal of fire, right out of the cinders. Do you know what
that means--to be a coal of fire?"
Polly smiled, evidently feeling it safer not to commit herself, and
trustingly confident that whatever it meant to be a coal of fire, it
was something pleasant.
"I am going to lie down here, please little Polly, and if you will sing
to Hortense while you rock her I shouldn't be surprised if you made me
go to sleep too," said Mr. Grey, stretching out on the old couch with a
sigh of relief.
"Do you feel ill, Sylvester dear?" asked Mrs. Grey, stroking the hair
from his forehead. "You look tired."
"Not in the least ill, Mary dear, but tired, yes," replied her husband,
kissing the gentle hand. "I did not sleep much last night--too excited
and happy, you know--but I am quite well, and still most happy. _Still_
happy? Why, I'm going to be happy all my days!"
"You've won, Sylvester," said Mrs. Grey, and she laid her cheek for a
moment where her hand had rested.
"I've won--_we've_ won through Rob, my son! That's what I've been
saying over and over, for the past twenty-four hours," cried Mr. Grey,
triumphantly. "You never can know what a help and a comfort you are,
Rob boy! It's a good deal of a joy to a man who has been accounted a
failure, to know his brains have given his dear ones all they need!
If you orderly housewives don't make too much noise in the attic, I'm
going to sleep, to dream of my happiness, and for the first time in all
my life waken from such a dream to find it true."
"Put me in your dream, Patergrey," cried Rob, as she ran out of the
room, seeing that little Polly had already established herself in the
small rocking-chair brought out for her use, and was hushing Hortense
to sleep with low croonings.
Wythie joined her mother and Rob in the upper hall, and all three went
atticward, laden with the garments of last night's frolic.
It took a longer time to put them away than they had foreseen, for the
chests had been sadly upset, and required much rearranging.
The brief winter light had nearly faded before Mrs. Grey straightened
herself, and said, with a sigh for the knees which the bare floor had
hurt: "Dear girls, it must be more than time to put the kettle on!"
"Perhaps Polly has done it; she ought, to preserve the unities. I don't
know what the unities are, but I mean well, and I'm trying to quote
'Polly, put the kettle on' in that clever, indirect way people make
allusions in novels," said Rob.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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