“My yarn’s more used to snarling than I am, dear child,” said Grandma Manser, smiling up at the earnest face, “but I’ll do my best. You let me know the right minute, someway.” “When I point my right arm at you with this stick in my hand, it’s a gun that never missed,” explained Polly to her assistants, “that’ll be the time for you to snarl, please.” Grandma Manser nodded cheerfully, and Polly, gun in hand, ran to her position behind Mrs. Ramsdell and Aunty Peebles. “As I was walking slowly along,” said Polly, with her lips pouted out in imitation of Uncle Blodgett, and the gun over her shoulder, “suddenly off to the left, not more than a dozen rods from the house, what should I see, but--” “Mary!” came a querulous voice from the foot of the garret stairs. “Mary Prentiss! Are you up there?” “Yes’m,” answered Polly, as the gun dropped to the floor, and Grandma Manser, fearing she had mistaken the signal, gave a very mild sound, meant for a fierce snarl. “Yes’m, I’m here. Do you want me downstairs?” “No, I’ll mount; I’m used to trouble, and they might as well hear the news at once,” said the fretful voice, drawing nearer. The stairs creaked under the slow steps; the little company in the garret waited; disappointment was on Polly’s face, but the old people looked sad and anxious. Mrs. Manser’s tall, thin figure and sallow, discontented face had a depressing effect on all of them, as she stood in her dark brown calico, leaning against the old bureau. “Mary Prentiss,” she said, solemnly, “your chance has come, thanks to the way I’ve brought you up and kept you clean. Miss Hester Pomeroy, of Pomeroy Oaks, is coming next Thursday morning to take you home with her for a month’s trial, and if you do your best and follow all I tell you, there’s a likelihood Miss Pomeroy will adopt you for good and all. And now, we won’t have any talk or fuss over it, for I shall need everybody’s help to get you fit to go in time. We’re going to have supper early to-night, so you’d better all follow me down right off, to be on hand.” Then Mrs. Manser turned and creaked slowly down the stairs, while Polly looked from the bewildered panther to the trembling edges of the wood with something very like tears in her brown eyes, and Ebenezer, after a thorough stretching of all his paws, disappeared around the bureau and hurried down to his evening meal. CHAPTER II GETTING READY It seemed to Polly that no days before ever flew so fast as the ones between that rainy Thursday afternoon in April and the next Thursday morning. To be sure, Polly was not accustomed to having new clothes especially made for her, and the hours spent in being fitted and re-fitted were just a waste of precious time, in her eyes. Aunty Peebles was the best dressmaker at Manser Farm. Her fingers were old and sometimes they trembled, but in her day she had been a famous seamstress, and even now she could hem a ruffle much better than Mrs. Manser.