“Well,” said Mrs. Manser, dropping into a rocking-chair and clasping her head with both hands, “all I’ve got to say is, you must do the best you can by Miss Pomeroy and all of us. You know just how much depends on Miss Pomeroy’s adopting you. You know what it’ll mean to Father Manser and me and the old folks that I board for almost nothing to keep them off the town, if you are adopted. And Grandma--you’re always saying you’re so fond of her--you’d like her to have one of those new hearing apparatuses, I should suppose.” “Oh, yes’m,” said Polly, eagerly, “I do love Grandma Manser so, and I want her to have the ap-apyoratus. Will it cost a great deal?” “I don’t just know,” said Mrs. Manser; “but they say Miss Pomeroy’s going to give five hundred dollars to whatever institution or place she finds the child she keeps, and a present of money to the folks that have brought her up. She didn’t mention it to me, but the butcher told me yesterday ’twas known all about, and she’s been sent for to several places to see children. But she never took a fancy to one till she saw you in church with me. She thinks you’ve got a look about the eyes that’s like Eleanor, that was her brother’s little girl who died last fall. I guess you’re about as different from her as a child could be, every other way.” “I suppose Eleanor was an awful good, quiet little girl, wasn’t she?” asked Polly, timidly. “Her name sounds kind of still. I don’t believe she ever tore her clothes, did she?” “I don’t suppose another such good child ever lived, according to Miss Hetty’s ideas,” said Mrs. Manser, dismally. “She’d never been here in town since she was a baby, and the mother’s folks brought her and Bobby, the twin, one summer to Pomeroy Oaks. As I’ve told you, both parents died, leastways they were destroyed in an accident, when the twins were less than a year old.” “And Bobby lives with his grandpa and grandma now,” said Polly, with the air of reciting an oft-repeated lesson, “and folks say that saw him when he was here last winter that he just sits and reads all the time; he doesn’t care for play or being out-doors much; and he never makes a speck of dirt or a mite of noise. And when somebody said what a good child he was, Miss Hetty Pomeroy, she said, ‘Wait till you see Eleanor!’ So anybody can tell what she must have been,” concluded poor little Polly, with a gasping breath. “And so, of course,” said Mrs. Manser, fixing a forlorn gaze on the little figure in stiffly starched pink gingham, “if you run wild out-doors, picking flowers and chasing round after the live stock and wasting time with the birds the way you’ve been allowed to do here, you’ll lose your chance, that’s all. You came of good folks: your mother was my third cousin and your father was a well-meaning man, though he wasn’t forehanded, and always enjoyed poor health. I’ve brought you up the best I could for over seven years, but I expect nothing but what Miss Hetty’ll send you back when the month’s up.”