Five Little Peppers Grown Up | Page 8

really, I don't think that Amy is quite understood," said Polly warmly, and forgetting herself; "if people believe in her, it makes her want to do things to please them."
"She says herself she has bothered you dreadfully," said Jack, with a vicious thrust of the walking-stick at his boot.
"She has a little," confessed Polly, "but not dreadfully. And I do think, Mr. Loughead, now that you have come, and that she sees how much you want her to study and practice, she will really do better. I do, indeed," said Polly earnestly.
Outside she could hear the "two boys," as she still called them, and Grandpapa's voice in animated consultation over the ways and means, she knew as well as if she were there, of spending the holidays, and it seemed as if she could never sit in the reception room another moment longer, but that she must fly out to them.
[Illustration: "OH!" SAID JACK LOUGHEAD. THEN HE TAPPED HIS BOOT WITH HIS WALKING STICK.]
"Amy has no mother," said Jack Loughead after a moment, and he turned away his head, and pretended to look out of the window.
"I know it." Polly's heart leaped guiltily. Oh! how could she think of holidays and good times, while this poor little girl, but fifteen, had only a dreary sense of boarding-school life to mean home to her. "And oh! I do think," Polly hastened to say, and she clasped her hands as Phronsie would have done, "it has made all the difference in the world to her. And she does just lovely--so much better, I mean, than other girls would in her place. I do really, Mr. Loughead," repeated Polly.
"And no sister," added Jack, as if to himself. "How is a fellow like me--why, I am twenty-five, Miss Pepper, and I've been knocking about the world ever since I was her age; my uncle took me then to Australia, into his business--how am I ever to 'understand,' as you call it, that girl?"
It was impossible not to see his distress, and Polly, with a deaf ear to the chatter out in the library, now bent all her energies to helping him.
"Mr. Loughead," she said, and the color deserted her round cheek, and she leaned forward from the depths of the big chair, "I am afraid you won't like what I am going to say."
"Go on, please," said Jack, his eyes on her face.
"I think if you want to understand Amy," said Polly, holding her hands very tightly together, to keep her courage up, "you must love her first."
"Hey? I don't understand," said Jack, quite bewildered.
"You must love her, and believe she's going to do nice things, and be proud of her," went on Polly steadily.
"How can I? She's such a little beggar," exclaimed Jack, "won't study, and all that."
"And you must make her the very best friend you have in all this world, and let her see that you are glad that she is your sister, and tell her things, and never, never scold." Then Polly stopped, and the color flew up to the waves of brown hair on her brow.
"I wish you'd go on," said Jack Loughead, as she paused.
"Oh! I've said enough," said Polly, with a gasp, and beginning to wish she could be anywhere out of the range of those great black eyes. "Do forgive me," she begged; "I didn't mean to say anything to hurt you."
Jack Loughead got up and straightened himself. "I'm much obliged to you, Miss Pepper," he said. "I think I'm more to blame than Amy, poor child."
"No, no," cried Polly, getting out of her chair, "I didn't mean so, indeed I didn't, Mr. Loughead. Oh! what have I said? I think you have done beautifully. How could you help things when you were not here? Oh! Mr. Loughead, I do hope you will forgive me. I have only made matters worse, I'm afraid," and poor Polly's face drooped.
Jack Loughead turned with a sudden gesture. "Perhaps you'll believe me when I say I've never had anything do me so much good in all my life, as what you said."
"What are those two talking about all this unconscionable time," Joel was now exclaiming in the library, as he glanced up at the clock. "I could finish that Amy Loughead in the sixteenth of a minute."
Old Mr. King turned uneasily in his chair. "Who is this young Loughead?" he asked of Jasper.
Jasper, seeing that an answer was expected of him, drew himself up, and said quickly, "Oh! he's the brother of that girl at the Salisbury School, father. You know Polly goes over there to help her practice."
"Ah!" said his father, "well, what is he doing here this morning, pray tell?"
"That's what I should like to know," chimed in Joel.
"Well, last evening," said Jasper, with an effort to make