"What do you mean?" demanded Polly, facing her friend with gleaming eyes and frowning brow.

"What do I mean!" echoed Molly mercilessly, "I mean just this: your old poem isn't any poem at all. It doesn't rhyme more than half way, and there's no more poetry about it than there is about one of your freckles. Poetry is all about spring and clouds and b.u.t.terflies, or else death or--" Molly paused for an idea. Not finding it, she hastily concluded, "Besides, I've heard something just like that before."

Polly choked down her rising sobs.

"Very well," she said, through her clenched teeth. "This is all I want of you, Molly Hapgood."

Deliberately she pulled off her mittens and put them into her pocket; then, with shaking hands and with her face drawn as if in pain, but with her eyes steadily fixed on Molly's face, she slowly tore the paper into long, narrow strips, gathered the strips together and tore them into tiny squares, and defiantly threw them away over the side of the bridge into the swift blue stream below.

But even before the first floating square had touched the surface of the water, the reaction had set in, and Polly could have cried for the loss of her first and only poem. For a moment, she gazed after the white bits drifting away from her; then, biting her lip to steady it and struggling to keep back the tears, she turned on her heel, without a word, and walked away towards home, leaving Molly to follow or not, as she chose.

The tears came fast now, as she hurried on, avoiding the main streets as best she could. No one was in sight when she reached the house, so she could run up the stairs unnoticed, and throw herself down across the foot of the bed for a long, hearty cry.

She had hoped so much from Molly's sympathy! But, after all, now the opportunity had come, the tears were not so ready as they had been, and she did not feel quite so much as if the world had abused her, as she did when she was standing on the bridge, watching the white dots on the river below. At least, no great harm was done, for she remembered the whole poem and could easily write it out again. As this thought came to her, she sprang up once more, seized a pencil and a bit of paper and rewrote the words which had caused her so much joy and so much pain. She was still sitting with her forehead resting on her clasped hands, reading the verses over and over and dreaming of the future day when fame should come to her, when she heard her mother's voice outside.

"Polly! Polly! are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here," answered Polly, moving across the room to open the door, with a secret hope that her mother would see that she had been crying, and ask the reason of her tears.

But Mrs. Adams was too intent on the matter in hand to give more than a pa.s.sing glance at her daughter.

"Polly, Aunt Jane wants you to run down to Mrs. Hapgood's and ask her if she can't take in some ministers next week, over the convention. She would like her to take four, if she can."

"Oh dear!" grumbled Polly. "I do wish Aunt Jane would go on her own old errands, and not keep me running all over town for her."

"Polly dear," Mrs. Adams's tone was very gentle; "Polly, aren't you forgetting yourself a little?"

"No, I'm not," returned Polly rebelliously. "I hate Aunt Jane."

"Polly!"

This time there was no mistaking her mother's meaning. After an instant, she added,--

"I wish you to go at once, my daughter, and to go pleasantly. Aunt Jane is a good, kind aunt to you." Polly raised her eyebrows, but dared not speak; "and I am sorry you are so ungrateful as not to be willing to do this little errand for her."

Polly turned away and obediently started on her errand, but as she went down the stairs, her mother heard her murmuring to herself words that were not altogether complimentary to Aunt Jane and the coming ministers.

It was one of the days when everything went wrong, Polly said to herself as she went out of the gate and down the silent street.

Molly had laughed at her, Aunt Jane had abused her, and, worst of all, her mother had spoken to her more seriously than she had done for a long time. That was the way it generally was with geniuses, she thought, and reflected with a vindictive joy that some day or other they would all be sorry for it. At this point she was interrupted by hearing her name called in boyish tones,--

"Polly! Polly! I say, wait for a fellow; can't you?"

Turning, she saw Alan running after her, with his overcoat waving in the breeze and his soft felt hat pulled low on his forehead.

"Where going?" he inquired briefly, as he overtook her and fell into step by her side.

"To your house," she answered as briefly, not yet able to return to her usual sunny manner.

"That's good," returned Alan cheerfully; then, as he surveyed her, he added, "What's up, Polly? You don't seem to be particularly festive this morning. Have you and Molly been having another pow- wow?"

"A little one," confessed Polly.

"That's too bad," said Alan, with a paternal air of consolation.

"If Molly's been teasing you, I'll give her fits when she comes back from Florence's. She's there now."

"Oh, I suppose it was both of us," responded Polly, cheered by his understanding of the situation.

"I presume 'twas," said Alan candidly. "Molly is an awful tease; she gets after me once in a while, so I know. You're snappish, Poll; but you don't keep fussing at a fellow and hitting him when he's down."

They walked on in silence for a few steps. Then Alan remarked, as he looked at her critically,--

"That's a gay little cap, Polly, and suits you first rate. New, isn't it?"

Polly nodded smilingly. Alan's sympathy had smoothed out all the wrinkles in her temper, and she was once more her own merry self, so by the time she went in at the Hapgood house, she was laughing and talking as brightly as if she and Molly had never taken their walk to the bridge.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Jessie, as she glanced down from the window of their room. "Here come Alan and Polly Adams. What a nuisance!"

The two sisters, left to themselves for the morning, had been having a private feast of lemonade and crackers in their own room, where they had been alternately reading and nibbling, for the past hour.

"Why is it a nuisance?" inquired Katharine, getting up to look out of the window, over her sister who was curled up in one of the deep window-seats, regardless of the delicate frost ferns that were thinly scattered over the panes.

"Just see here," replied Jessie, as she stretched out her arm for the pitcher and tilted it expressively, exposing to view a few bare, dry slices of lemon in the bottom. "They'll be sure to come up here, and it's rather shabby not to give them any."

"I'd make some more," said Katharine, pensively surveying the ruins of the feast; "but I put our very last lemon into this, and I can't. Maybe they won't care for any, it's so cold," she added, with an air of relief.

"I'll tell you, put in some more water, and mix it up pretty well," said Jessie hastily, as she heard Alan calling from below.

"It was almost too strong before, so it won't be so bad, and we really ought to treat, I think."

Katharine laughed silently, as she obeyed her sister's instructions, while Jessie surveyed the operation with dancing eyes.

"Let's see," she said gravely, as she poured out a few drops into a gla.s.s.

With frowning solemnity she tasted it, then set down the gla.s.s with an air of decision.

"It's real good truly, Kit. I'll get out some more crackers, and then you call them up. Boys are never very fussy, when it's something to eat; and Polly will like the fun." And as she opened the box and took out a fresh plateful of their dainty crackers, Katharine invited up her guests who came willingly enough, never dreaming of the straits to which their friends' hospitality had put them.

"Whose autograph alb.u.m is this?" exclaimed Polly, pouncing on a flaming red and gold volume that lay on the table.

"It belongs to one of the girls up at school," answered Jessie.

"Just see here, and here, and here," she continued, turning over the leaves and pointing to several well-known names. "You see, she lives in Boston and her father knows all these people, so she could get them."

"How splendid!" And Polly bent over to gaze more closely on the signature of a writer clear to all childish hearts. "I'd give almost anything for that," she sighed.

"Which is that?" asked Katharine, leaning over to glance at the page. "Yes, I wouldn't much mind having that one. But, after all, autograph alb.u.ms are a bore. I used to care for them, years ago, but they are all just alike. I had one friend who wrote the same verse in every alb.u.m she took, only she changed the name in it.

Have some more lemonade, Polly." And she waved the pitcher which was nearly empty for the second time.

"No, thank you," answered Polly gratefully; "but it's been ever so good. I haven't had any since last summer, so this tasted better than usual, and I always like it."

"I am so glad," responded Katharine heartily, though with a sly glance at her sister.

"But I don't think autographs are stupid," said Jessie, returning to the subject of the book in her hand. "I wish I had all these.