WHERE IS POLLY PERKINS?
Aunt Mary had come down from the Farm to spend the day with Grandmother
and with Patty. She had really come to say good-bye, for to-morrow
Grandmother’s house at Four Corners would be closed and she and Patty
would start for the city, where Grandmother was to spend the winter at
Patty’s home.
Aunt Mary had brought presents with her from the Farm, presents that
were neatly packed in boxes ready to be placed in Grandmother’s big
black trunk.
There was a box of home-made sausages, such as you couldn’t buy in
the city no matter how hard you tried. There was a loaf of Father’s
favorite cake, ‘raised’ cake it was called, covered over with snowy
icing and full of raisins, as Patty well knew. There were two squash
pies for Mother, packed so carefully that they couldn’t possibly be
broken. Last of all there was a present for Patty that did not have to
be packed in a box because it was an apron, a pretty blue pinafore that
covered Patty from top to toe, and that had two pockets large enough to
hold a handkerchief or a ball or anything else that Patty might choose
to put in them. And on each pocket Aunt Mary had embroidered a tiny
bunch of orange and yellow and brown flowers.
Patty was delighted with her present.
‘The little flowers look as real as real can be,’ she declared, patting
and sniffing the flowers and patting the pockets again. ‘I think they
smell sweet, Aunt Mary. I truly think they do.’
Very carefully Patty placed her pinafore in Grandmother’s trunk, and
ran to fetch Polly Perkins to show her to Aunt Mary.
‘Uncle Charles painted her. Did he tell you?’ asked Patty, dancing
Polly up and down before Aunt Mary until the dolly’s brown curls flew.
‘Isn’t she beautiful, Aunt Mary? Hasn’t she the prettiest eyes, and
doesn’t her mouth look smiling? I can brush and brush her hair, too,
all I like, and it curls right up again. Isn’t her dress pretty? How I
wish she had pockets like my new apron! She would be just perfect if
she had pockets on her dress, Aunt Mary.’
‘Run and ask Grandmother for a bit of this pink gingham,’ said
good-natured Aunt Mary, ‘and I will make the pockets for you while we
all sit here and talk.’
Grandmother shook her head and said that Patty would be spoiled if
Aunt Mary were not careful. But she gave Patty the gingham, and a
moment later Aunt Mary was measuring and cutting the pockets for Polly
Perkins’s dress.
‘Would you like a bunch of flowers or a little rabbit embroidered on
each pocket?’ asked Aunt Mary, who was so skillful with her needle that
nothing seemed too hard for her to do.
Patty thought for a moment.
‘A rabbit, I think,’ she began slowly.
Then suddenly she spun round on the tips of her toes.
‘I have thought of something, Aunt Mary!’ cried Patty, smiling a wise
little smile. ‘I have thought of something so nice. Could you sew
Polly’s name on her pockets--Polly on one pocket and Perkins on the
other? Could you do that, Aunt Mary, do you think?’
Yes, Aunt Mary thought that she could.
‘Here is some green thread in Grandmother’s basket,’ said she. ‘It will
be pretty if I embroider her name in green on the pink dress, don’t you
think?’
Patty thought it would be beautiful, and said so. She stood close
beside Aunt Mary and watched her take the first stitches in Polly
Perkins’s name.
Just at that moment who should drive up to the house but the expressman
come for Grandmother’s trunk hours before he had been expected. And
then such a hurry and bustle to crowd the last odds and ends into the
trunk and to lock it and to strap it, all in the twinkling of an eye.
But at last it was done, and away went the trunk, bumping down the
porch steps on the expressman’s back, bumping into the wagon, and
bumping off down the road, round the corner, and out of sight.
And then, and not until then, it was discovered that Polly Perkins,
pockets and all, had been left behind. There she lay in Aunt Mary’s
chair where she had been tossed when the expressman came.
‘Now I can carry her home myself to-morrow,’ said Patty, delighted with
this turn of affairs. ‘I can carry her all the way in my arms, can’t I,
Grandmother? Do say that I may!’
‘Yes, I suppose that you may,’ answered Grandmother, who did not look
so pleased with the plan as did Patty. ‘I am afraid there will not be
any room for her in my bag.’
Aunt Mary worked away until the pockets were finished, and when Patty
looked at her dolly in her gay pink frock, with a green ‘Polly’ on one
pocket and a green ‘Perkins’ on the other, she thought she had never
seen anything so pretty in all her life.
Uncle Charles came to supper and to take Aunt Mary home, and, before he
was inside the door, Patty was all ready to whisper in his ear and to
give him three kisses, one on each cheek and one on his chin.
‘I think you paint the loveliest dollies in the world,’ whispered
Patty in Uncle Charles’s ear. ‘And that is why my dolly is named Polly
Perkins. Because she is as beautiful as a butterfly. Grandmother
said so. And I am going to carry her all the way home in my arms.
Grandmother said that, too.’
But the next morning when Patty woke the rain was pouring down, and
there was no question, in Grandmother’s mind, at least, about Patty
carrying Polly Perkins in her arms.
‘We will send your dolly home in a box by express,’ decided
Grandmother. ‘You wouldn’t enjoy carrying her in the rain, I know.’
‘She might catch cold,’ agreed Patty, ‘for she hasn’t any coat. That is
the way Isabel went home, in a box, and I expect she enjoyed it, too.’
So Polly was wrapped in a pink-and-blue tufted coverlet, that was to
have been used as a traveling-rug, and carefully placed in a large
pasteboard box.
‘Be a good girl,’ whispered Patty, tenderly kissing Polly good-bye on
her rosy mouth.
Then she watched Grandmother wrap the box in heavy paper and tie it
with stout brown twine.
‘I will have my hands full with a bag and an umbrella and a child,’
said Grandmother to Uncle Charles, who had come to take them down to
the train. ‘I can’t think of allowing Patty to carry her doll. I have
packed it in a box and addressed it to Patty’s mother, and I want you
to leave it at the express office as you go home, Charles, if it won’t
be too far out of your way.’
Uncle Charles promised to send Polly Perkins along that very day. So,
with a farewell pat on the outside of the box that held her dolly,
Patty and Grandmother started on their journey in the rain.
It was fun traveling in the rain, Patty thought. She liked to see the
people bustling along in the wet. She liked to watch the dripping
umbrellas bob in and out of the stations that they passed. She liked
the muddy and almost empty roads, with only now and then a procession
of ducks waddling along, or a lonely dog trotting by, or a farmer
driving into town with perhaps a colt tied at the back of his cart.
As they drew near to the big city, Patty peered out of the misty
window-pane over which ran rivulets of raindrops so thick and fast that
the tall houses could scarcely be seen and the street-lamps looked like
cloudy little suns dotting the way.
‘Are we nearly there?’ asked Patty for at least the hundredth time.
And at last Grandmother could answer, ‘Yes, Patty, we are. In five
minutes more you will see Father, I hope.’
Grandmother was right. As the train drew into the station and men in
little red caps, who wanted to carry your bag, Patty knew, came running
down the platform, there on the platform, too, stood Father, and a
second later Patty was in his arms.
Through the rain they rode home to Mother, waiting for them in the
large white apartment house where Patty lived.
There were many houses on the long city street--tall white apartments,
low red-brick houses, then tall white apartments again. Patty pressed
her nose against the window of the cab, peering out at the familiar
scene.
‘There are our Christmas trees!’ she cried, catching a glimpse of the
two little fir trees that, in white flower pots, stood one on either
side of the entrance to their apartment house.
‘And there is Thomas in the doorway. He is watching for me, I do
believe.’
Thomas was the hall boy, and a good friend to Patty, too.
‘And there is Mother in the window. Mother! Mother!’
Patty pounded on the window of the cab and called and waved. The moment
the cab stopped, without waiting for Father’s umbrella, across the
sidewalk went Patty with a skip and a jump, up the steps, and into the
hall where she flung both arms about Mother’s neck.
‘I knew you would come down to meet me,’ said Patty, giving Mother the
tightest squeeze she could and smiling broadly at Thomas over Mother’s
shoulder. ‘I have come home, Thomas. I am home.’
And so she was.
Oh, how much there was to tell and to see! Patty’s tongue flew, and her
bright eyes glanced hither and thither, and her quick little feet sped
up and down the hall and in and out of the rooms she remembered so well.
And in her own room who should be waiting for Patty, sitting in the
middle of her very own little bed, but Isabel, home from her trip to
the South and as good as new, only perhaps a little prettier than
before, Patty thought.
‘Now, Isabel,’ said Patty that night in bed, as Isabel lay where Patty
could put out her hand and touch her if she felt at all lonely before
she fell asleep, ‘now, Isabel, I must tell you all about your new
sister, Polly Perkins. I hope you are going to be good friends. She
will be home perhaps to-morrow, perhaps the day after, and I hope you
will love her very much indeed.’
Isabel promised that she would. And all the next day--another rainy
day, too--she and Patty watched for Polly Perkins, though both Mother
and Grandmother said it was far too soon to expect Polly home. All the
next day and the next and the next Patty and Isabel watched for Polly,
but Polly did not come.
‘Has Polly come?’ was the first question Patty asked every morning.
And every night when she went to bed she said, ‘Please wake me up if
Polly comes to-night.’
But Polly did not come.
So Grandmother wrote to Uncle Charles to ask if he had forgotten to
send Polly. And Uncle Charles wrote back that he had sent her off the
very day that Grandmother and Patty left Four Corners.
Next Father went to the express office, and the express office promised
to find Polly Perkins, if it possibly could.
‘Perhaps she has been shipped out West. Perhaps she is lying in the
Four Corners office,’ said the express people. ‘We will find out and
let you know.’
Meanwhile Patty watched, and talked, and wondered what could have
become of Polly Perkins.
‘My darling Polly! She is as beautiful as a butterfly, Mother,’ said
Patty, not once, nor twice, but many times. ‘You don’t know how
beautiful she is. Grandmother thinks so, too. That is why I named her
Polly Perkins. She has a pink dress and brown curls and the prettiest
brown eyes. And pockets with her name on them, Mother. Just think! I
can’t wait to have you see her. I do wish she would come home.’
But still Polly did not come.
Where is Polly Perkins? What can have happened to her? Where can she be?
Patty and Mother and Father and Grandmother all asked these questions
over and over and over. But not one of them guessed the answer, though
they tried again and again.
And now I will tell you what had happened to Polly Perkins.