Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl by L. T. Meade (free ebook reader for iphone .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: L. T. Meade
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“Zeb! I say, Zeb! Zebedee, if you have taken that young girl into your sanctum, I desire you to send her out this moment.”
The little man’s face grew pale; he pushed his spectacles still higher on his forehead.
“There, my love, do you hear her? I did my best for you. I was beginning your education.”
“Zeb! Zeb! Open the door this minute,” was shouted outside.
“You’ll remember, my love, to your dying day, that I showed you three teeth and the bit of jawbone of a Chinaman who died a thousand years ago.”
“Zeb!” thundered the voice.
“Yap! yap! yap!” barked the small dog.
“You must go, my dear. She’s a powerful woman. She always has her way. There, let me push you out. I wouldn’t have her catch sight of me at this moment for fifty pounds.”
The green baize door was opened a tiny bit, a violent shove was administered to Flower’s back, and she found herself in the arms of Mrs. Cameron, and in extreme danger of having her nose bitten off by the infuriated Scorpion.
“Just like Zebedee!” exclaimed the good lady. “Always struggling to impart the dry bones of obsolete learning to the young! Come this way, Miss—Miss—what’s your name?”
“Dalrymple—Flower Dalrymple.”
“An outlandish title, worthy of Sleepy Hollow. I have not an idea who you are, but come into the dining-room.”
“Might I—— might I have a little breakfast?”
“Bless me, the child looks as if she were going to faint! Ann, Ann, I say! Down, Scorpion! You shall have no cream if you bark any more. Ann, bring half a glass of port wine over here, and make some breakfast for Miss—Miss Rymple as fast as you can.”
“Dalrymple, please!”
“Don’t worry me, child. I can’t get my tongue round long names. Now, what is it you are called? Daisy? What in the world have you come to me for, Daisy?”
“I’m Flower——”
“Well, and isn’t Daisy a flower? Now then, Daisy Rymple, tell your story as quickly as possible. I don’t mind giving you breakfast, but I’m as busy as possible to-day. I’ve six committee meetings on between now and two o’clock. Say your say, Daisy, and then you can go.”
“But I’ve come to stay.”[Pg 138]
“To stay? Good gracious! Scorpion, down, sir! Now, young lady, have you or have you not taken leave of your senses?”
“No, really. May I tell you my story?”
“If you take ten minutes over it; I won’t give you longer time.”
“I’ll try to get it into ten minutes. I’m an Australian, and so is David. David is my brother. We came over in the Australasia about six weeks ago. Dr. Maybright met us in London, and took us down to Sleepy Hollow.”
“Bless the man!—just like him. Had he any responsible matron or spinster in the house, child?”
“I don’t know; I don’t think so. There was Helen and Polly and——”
“I don’t want to hear about Polly! Go on; your ten minutes will soon be up. Go on.”
“A couple of days ago we went on a picnic—I have a way of getting into awful passions—and Polly—Polly vexed me.”
“Oh, she vexed you? You’re not the first that young miss has vexed, I can tell you.”
“She vexed me; I oughtn’t to have minded; I got into a passion; I felt awful; I ran away with baby.”
“Goodness me! what is the world coming to? You don’t mean to say you have dared to bring the infant here, Daisy?”
“No, no. I ran away with her on to the moors. I was so frightened, for I thought baby had died. Then Maggie came, and she saved her life, and she was brought home again.”
“That’s a good thing; but I can’t see why you are troubling me with this story.”
“Yesterday morning I gave baby back to Dr. Maybright. He’s not like other people; he looked at me, and his look pierced my heart. He said something, too, and then for the first time I began to be really, really sorry. I went up to my room; I stayed there alone all day; I was miserable.”
“Served you right if you were, Daisy.”
“In the evening I was so hungry, I went down for food. I met Firefly; she told me the worst.”
“Then the baby died? You really are an awful girl, Daisy Rymple.”
“No. The baby is pretty well, and Polly, who sprained her foot running after me, is pretty well; but it’s—it’s Dr. Maybright—the best man I ever met—a man who could have helped me and made me a—a good girl—he’s very, very ill, and they think he may die. He wasn’t strong, and he was out all night looking for baby and me, and he got a bad chill, and he—he may be dead now. It was my doing; Fly told me so.”
Flower laid her head on the table; her long sustained fortitude gave way; she sobbed violently.
Her tears stained Mrs. Cameron’s snowy table-linen; her head was pressed down on her hands; her face was hidden. She was impervious in her woe to any angry words or to the furious barking of a small dog.
At last a succession of violent shakes recalled her to herself.
“Will you sit up?—spoiling my damask and shedding tears into the excellent coffee I have made for you. Ah, that’s better; now I can see your face. Don’t you know that you are a very naughty, dangerous sort of girl?”
“Yes, I know that quite well. Mother always said that if I didn’t check my passion I’d do great mischief some day.”
“And right she was. I don’t suppose the table-linen will ever get over those coffee stains mixed with tears. Now, have the goodness to tell me, Daisy, or Ivy, or whatever you are called, why you have come to tell this miserable, disgraceful story to me.”
“Fly said they none of them could love me now.”
“I should think not, indeed! No one will love such a naughty girl. What have you come to me for?”
“I thought I could stay with you for a little, until there was another home found for me.”
“Oh, ah! Now at last we have come to the bottom of the mystery. And I suppose you thought I’d pet you and make much of you?”
“I didn’t. I thought you’d scold me and be very cross. I came to you as a punishment, for Polly always said you were the crossest woman she ever met.”
“Polly said that? Humph! Now eat up your breakfast quickly, Daisy. I’m going out. Don’t stir from this room until I come back.”
Mrs. Cameron, who had come down-stairs in her bonnet, slammed the dining-room door after her, walked across the hall, and let herself out. It did not take her many minutes to reach the telegraph office. From, there she sent a brief message to Helen Maybright:
“Sorry your father is ill. Expect me this evening with Daisy Rymple.”
With all her easy and languishing ways, Flower Dalrymple had often gone through rough times. Her life in Australia had given to her experiences both of the extreme of luxury and the extreme of roughing, but never in the course of her young life did she go through a more uncomfortable journey than that from Mrs. Cameron’s house in Bath to Sleepy Hollow. It was true that Scorpion, Mrs. Cameron, and Flower, traveled first-class; it was true also that where it was necessary for them to drive the best carriages to be procured were at their service; but, as on all and every occasion Scorpion was king of the ceremonies these arrangements did not[Pg 140] add to Flower’s comfort. Mrs. Cameron, who felt seriously angry with the young girl, addressed all her conversation to the dog, and as the dog elected to sit on Flower’s lap, and snapped and snarled whenever she moved, and as Mrs. Cameron’s words were mostly directed through the medium of Scorpion at her, her position was not an agreeable one.
“Ah-ha, my dear doggie!” said the good lady. “Somebody has come to the wrong box, has she not? Somebody thought I would take her in, and be kind to her, and pet her, and give her your cream, did she not? But no one shall have my doggie’s cream; no, that they shan’t!”
“Mrs. Cameron,” said Flower, when these particularly clever and lucid remarks had continued for nearly an hour, “may I open the window of the carriage at this side? I’m quite stifling.”
Mrs. Cameron laid a firm, fat hand upon the window cord, and bent again over the pampered Scorpion.
“And is my doggie’s asthma not to be considered for the sake of somebody who ought not to be here, who was never invited nor wished for, and is now to be returned like a bad penny to where she came from? Is my own dearest little dog to suffer for such a person’s whims? Oh, fie! oh, fie! Well, come here my Scorpion; your mistress won’t reject you.”
For Flower, in a fit of ungovernable temper, had suddenly dashed the petted form of Scorpion to the ground.
The poor angry girl now buried herself in the farthest corner of the railway carriage. From there she could hear Mrs. Cameron muttering about “somebody’s” temper, and hoping that “somebody” would get her deserts.
These remarks, uttered several times, frightened Flower so much that at last she looked up, and said, in a queer, startled voice:
“You don’t think Dr. Maybright is going to die? You can’t be so awfully wicked as to think that.”
“Oh, we are wicked, are we, Scorpion?” said Mrs. Cameron, her fat hand gently stroking down Scorpion’s smooth fur from tip to tail. “Never mind, Scorpion, my own; never mind. When the little demon of temper gets into somebody she isn’t quite accountable, is she?”
Flower wondered if any restraining power would keep her from leaping out of the window.
But even the weariest journey comes to an end at last, and twenty-four hours after she had left Sleepy Hollow, Flower, feeling the most subdued, the most abject, the most brow-beaten young person in Christendom, returned to it. Toward the end of the journey she felt impervious to Mrs. Cameron’s sly allusions, and Scorpion growled and snapped at her in vain. Her whole heart was filled with one over-powering dread. How should she find the Doctor? Was he better? Was he worse? Or had all things earthly come to an end for him; and had he reached a place where even the[Pg 141] naughtiest girl in all the world could vex and trouble him no longer?
When the hired fly drew up outside the porch, Flower suddenly remembered her first arrival—the gay “Welcome” which had waved above her head; the kind, bright young faces that had come out of the darkness to greet her; the voice of the head of the house, that voice which she was so soon to learn to love, uttering the cheeriest and heartiest words of greeting. Now, although Mrs. Cameron pulled the hall-door bell with no uncertain sound, no one, for a time at least, answered the summons, and Flower, seizing her opportunity, sprang out of the fly and rushed into the house.
The first person she met, the very first, was Polly. Polly was sitting at the foot of the stairs, all alone. She had seated herself on the bottom step. Her knees were huddled up almost to her chin. Her face was white, and bore marks of tears. She scarcely looked up when Flower ran to her.
“Polly! Polly! How glad I am you at least are not very ill.”
“Is that you, Flower?” asked Polly.
She did not seem surprised, or in any way affected.
“Yes, my leg does still ache very much. But what of that? What of anything now? He is worse! They have sent for another doctor. The doctor from London is upstairs; he’s with him. I’m waiting here to catch him when he comes down, for I must know the very worst.”
“The very worst!” echoed Flower in a feeble tone.
She tumbled down somehow on to the stair beside Polly, and the next instant her death-like face lay in Polly’s lap.
“Now, my dear, you need not be in the least frightened,” said a shrill voice in Polly’s ears. “A most troublesome young person! a most troublesome! She has just fainted; that’s all. Let me fetch a jug of cold water to pour over her.”
“Is that you, Aunt Maria?” said Polly. “Oh, yes, there was a telegram, but we forgot all about it. And is that Scorpion, and is he going to bark? But he mustn’t! Please kneel down here, Aunt Maria, and hold Flower’s head. Whatever happens, Scorpion mustn’t bark.
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