Now, as Polly had grown up among the boarders, most of whom petted her, no one can account for her slightly ungrateful reception of their good-will; but it is certain that the first time she was old enough to be trusted at the table, she grew very red in the face, slipped down from her high chair, and took her bowl of bread and milk on to the porch.  She was followed and gently reasoned with, but her only explanation was that she did n’t “yike to eat wiv so many peoples.”  Persuasion bore no fruit, and for a long time Miss Polly ate in solitary grandeur.  Indeed, the feeling increased rather than diminished, until the child grew old enough to realize her mother’s burden, when with passionate and protecting love she put her strong young shoulders under the load and lifted her share, never so very prettily or gracefully,—­it is no use trying to paint a halo round Polly’s head,—­but with a proud courage and a sort of desperate resolve to be as good as she could, which was not very good, she would have told you.

She would come back from the beautiful home of her friend, Bell Winship, and look about on her own surroundings, never with scorn, or sense of bitterness,—­she was too sensible and sweet-natured for that,—­but with an inward rebellion against the existing state of things, and a secret determination to create a better one, if God would only give her power and opportunity.  But this pent-up feeling only showed itself to her mother in bursts of impulsive nonsense, at which Mrs. Oliver first laughed and then sighed.

“Oh, for a little, little breakfast-table!” Polly would say, as she flung herself on her mother’s couch, and punched the pillows desperately.  “Oh, for a father to say ‘Steak, Polly dear?’ instead of my asking, ‘Steakorchop?’ over and over every morning!  Oh, for a lovely, grown-up, black-haired sister, who would have hundreds of lovers, and let me stay in the room when they called!  Oh, for a tiny baby brother, fat and dimpled, who would crow, and spill milk on the tablecloth, and let me sit on the floor and pick up the things he threw down!  But instead of that, a new, big, strange family, different people every six months, people who don’t like each other, and have to be seated at opposite ends of the table; ladies whose lips tremble with disappointment if they don’t get the second joint of the chicken, and gentlemen who are sulky if any one else gets the liver.  Oh, mamma, I am sixteen now, and it will soon be time for me to begin taking care of you; but I warn you, I shall never do it by means of the boarders!”

“Are you so weak and proud, little daughter, as to be ashamed because I have taken care of you these sixteen years ‘by means of the boarders,’ as you say?”

“No, no, mamma!  Don’t think so badly of me as that.  That feeling was outgrown long ago.  Do I not know that it is just as fine and honorable as anything else in the world, and do I not love and honor you with all my heart because you do it in so sweet and dignified a way that everybody respects you for it?  But it is n’t my vocation.  I would like to do something different, something wider, something lovelier, if I knew how, and were ever good enough!”