“I didn’t say I’d do it!” twinkled Miss Twining; “but I declare, I believe I would try, if that would get you in here!”

“Never you fear!” cried Polly.  “You’ll see me so much, now I know you want me, you won’t get time for anything!”

“I’ll risk it.”  Miss Twining nodded with emphasis.

“I’ve wondered sometimes,” Polly went on, “what I would do if I had to stay alone as much as some folks do—­the ladies here, for instance.  Of course you can visit each other.”

“Yes, except in the hours when it is forbidden.”

“Strange, they won’t let you go to see each other in the evening.”

“I think it is because the ladies used to stay upstairs visiting instead of going down to hear Mrs. Nobbs read.  Not all of them are educated up to science and history and such things.”

“I should think they would have some good books in the library, story books.  Such a dry-looking lot I never saw!”

Miss Twining smiled.  “They say that one night when Mrs. Nobbs was reading ‘History of the Middle Ages,’ she went into the parlor to find only two listeners, and right after that the rule was made forbidding them to go to each other’s rooms.”

Polly shook her head laughingly.  “That was pretty hard on Mrs. Nobbs, wasn’t it?  Is she a good reader?”

Miss Twining gave a little shrug.  “I don’t go down usually,” she answered.

“Too bad!  I don’t wonder you are lonely.  But you can read, can’t you?”

“Not much by this light.  It is too high.”

Polly regarded it with dissatisfaction.

“Yes, it is.  I wish you had one on the table.  They ought to give you good lights.”

Miss Twining pinched up her pretty lips with a thumb and forefinger, but said nothing.

“I was so indignant to think they took that money from you that you earned for writing a poem, I haven’t got over it yet!”

“It did seem too bad,” Miss Twining sighed.

“It was the meanest thing!” frowned Polly.

“For a long time I had not been in the spirit of writing, but that day I just had to write those verses, and when the paper accepted them it seemed to give me strength and courage and pleasure all at once.  I was so happy that morning, thinking I could earn enough to buy me little things I want and perhaps some new books besides.”

“I’ve felt like crying about it ever since,” said Polly sadly.  “You have written a good deal, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yes!  When I was at home with father and mother I wrote nearly every day.  I had a book published,” she added a little shyly.

“You did!  That must be lovely—­to publish a book!” Polly beamed brightly on the little woman in the rocker.

“Yes, it was pleasant—­part of it!  It didn’t sell so well as I hoped it would.  The publishers said I couldn’t expect it, as I hadn’t much reputation, and it takes reputation to make poetry sell.  They said it was good verse, and the editors had been so hospitable to me I counted on the public—­” She shook her head with a sad little smile.  “I even counted on my friends—­that was the hardest part of the whole business!”