"Scared? Not I!" and she walked down the path with him, drying her hands on a dish-towel.

It was a delicious morning in late September; the air dry and sparkling as a jewel, the mountains baring their shoulders to the morning sun. The Peak had already a dash of winter on his crown, but the barren slope of rock below looked like an impregnable fortress.

Polly and Dan were never tired of wondering at the changing moods that played so gloriously upon that steadfast front.

"Seems as if they must almost see him from Fieldham this morning, he's so bright," said Polly.

"That's so," Dan agreed. "I say, Polly, isn't he enjoying himself, though?"

"Course he is!" Polly answered. "Isn't everybody?"

Then Polly went back to her splashing water and flopping dish-towels, and was busy for an hour about the house. By and bye she sat herself down in the little porch and proceeded to put good honest st.i.tches into a child's frock, for the making of which she was to receive twenty-five cents. Not very good pay for a day's work, but "twenty-five-hundred-million per cent. better than nothing," as she had a.s.sured the doubtful Dan.

Life looked very different to her since those two bright words had been added to the sign. Not that it had looked otherwise than pleasant before; but there was so little originality in the idea of doing needlework that it had scarcely merited success, while this,--of course it must succeed!

In truth, she had sat there hardly an hour, when she distinctly heard the occupant of a yellow buckboard read the sign, and then turn to her companion with a word of comment. Polly had always had an idea that one of those yellow buckboards would be the making of her fortune yet.

The one in question was drawn by a pretty pair of ponies, and two young girls were in possession of it.

"I have an idea they'll notice it again, when they come back this way," Polly surmised. "But if they're going up the canon they won't come back till just as I'm getting dinner."

And, sure enough, the mutton stew was just beginning to simmer, when there came a rap at the door.

The front door opened directly into the little sitting-room, and was never closed in pleasant weather. As Polly emerged from the kitchen, her face very red from hobn.o.bbing with the stove, she found one of the girls of the yellow buckboard standing in the doorway.

"Good morning, Miss----"

"Fitch. My name is Polly Fitch."

"What a jolly name!" the visitor exclaimed. "I think you must be the one with ideas."

"Yes," said Polly, "Do you want one? Come in and take a seat."

"I do want an idea most dreadfully," the young lady rejoined, taking the proffered chair. "I want something for a b.o.o.by prize for a backgammon tournament. I don't suppose anybody ever heard of a backgammon tournament before, but it's going to be great fun. We are doing it to take the conceit out of a young man we know, who declares that there's nothing in backgammon that he didn't learn the first time he played it with his grandfather."

"And you want a b.o.o.by prize?" Polly looked thoughtful for the s.p.a.ce of sixteen seconds. Then she cried; "Oh, I have an idea! Get somebody to whittle you a couple of wooden dice; then paint them white and mark them with black sixes on each of the six sides of each die. You could call it '_a b.o.o.by pair-o'-dice_' if you don't object to puns!"

"What a good idea! It's simply perfect! I wonder whom I could get to do it for me?"

"Why, Dan could do it with his jackknife, just as well as not. If you'll come to-morrow morning you shall have them."

Accordingly, the next morning, the young lady appeared, and was enchanted with her prize.

"And how much will they be?" she asked.

"Well, I had thought of charging twenty-five cents for an idea, and the dice didn't cost us anything and only took a few minutes to make."

"Supposing we call it a dollar. Would that be fair?"

"I don't believe they are worth a dollar."

"Yes, they are; I should be ashamed to take them for less. What a splendid idea that was of yours, to put out that sign!"

"I should think it was, if I could get any more customers like you!"

"I'll send them to you,--never you fear!"

Miss Beatrice Compton returned to her buckboard a captive to Polly.

"She's the sweetest thing," she told her mother, who chanced to be her pa.s.senger on this occasion. "She's got eyes and hair exactly of a colour, a sort of reddish brown, and her eyes twinkle at you in the dearest way, and she wears her hair in the quaintest pug, just in the right place on her head, sort of up in the air; and she's a lady, too; anybody can see that. I wonder who 'Dan' is; you don't suppose she's married, do you?"

"You can't tell," Mrs. Compton replied. "Persons in that walk of life marry very young."

"But, Mamma, she isn't a 'person,' and she doesn't belong to 'that walk of life.' She's a lady."

Miss Beatrice was as good as her word, and three days had not pa.s.sed when a horseman stopped before the little cottage, sprang from his horse, and looked about for a place to tie; there was no hitching-post near by. Polly was sitting in the porch making b.u.t.tonholes.

"If you were coming in here, you'd better lead him right up the walk,"

she said, "and tie him to the porch-post."

"That's a good idea!" the young man replied, promptly acting upon the advice. "You are Miss Polly Fitch, are you not?"

"Yes."

"I knew you the minute I saw you, because Miss Compton described you to me." This was meant to be very flattering, but Polly, who seldom missed a point, was quite unconscious that one had been made.

"Have you come for an idea?" she asked, quite innocently, and Mr.

Reginald Axton, who was rather sensitive, wondered whether she "meant anything." On second thoughts he concluded that she did not, and he began again:

"I got that b.o.o.by prize you made."

"Did you?" cried Polly, with animation. "Oh, I wonder whether you were the one--" she paused.

"The one that what?" he asked hastily.

"The one that thought there wasn't anything in the game."

"Well, yes, I was. And the others had all the luck, and so of course I got beaten."

"Of course!" said Polly, with a twinkle of delight.

"I see you're on their side, but all the same I want you to help me to pay them back. You see I wanted to do something about it, and I thought of sending Miss Compton some flowers with a verse, and I thought perhaps you could do the verse."

"Did you expect me to furnish the idea, too?"

"Why, of course! That's why I came to you. I thought, if you were so awfully bright, perhaps you could make verses."

Polly looked thoughtful.

"I should charge you quite a lot for it," she said,--"much as a dollar perhaps; for you know writing verses is quite an accomplishment."