Polly Olivers Problem | Page 5

it is every bit as inspiring as 'The Chinese Must Go.' If I were n't obliged to set the boarders' table, I 'd work the motto on a banner this very minute, and march up and down the plaza with it, followed by a crowd of small boys with toy drums."
"The Chinese never did go," said Mrs. Oliver suggestively, from the sofa.
"Oh, that's a trifle; they had a treaty or something, and besides, there are so many of them, and they have such an object in staying."
"You can't turn people out of the house on a moment's warning."
"Certainly not. Give them twenty-four hours, if necessary. We can choose among several methods of getting rid of them. I can put up a placard with
BOARDERS, HO!
printed on it in large letters, and then assemble them in the banquet-hall and make them a speech."
"You would insult them," objected Mrs. Oliver feebly, "and they are perfectly innocent."
"Insult them? Oh, mamma, how unworthy of you! I shall speak to them firmly but very gently. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' I shall begin, 'you have done your best to make palatable the class of human beings to which you belong, but you have utterly failed, and you must go! Board, if you must, ladies and gentlemen, but not here! Sap, if you must, the foundations of somebody else's private paradise, but not ours. In the words of the Poe-et, "Take thy beaks from off our door."' Then it will be over, and they will go out."
"Slink out, I should say," murmured Polly's mother.
"Very well, slink out," replied Polly cheerfully. "I should like to see them slink, after they 've been rearing their crested heads round our table for generations; but I think you credit them with a sensitiveness they do not, and in the nature of things cannot, possess. There is something in the unnatural life which hardens both the boarder and those who board her. However, I don't insist on that method. Let us try bloodless eviction,--set them quietly out in the street with their trunks; or strategy,--put one of them in bed and hang out the smallpox flag. Oh, I can get rid of them in a week, if I once set my mind on it."
"There is no doubt of that," said Mrs. Oliver meekly.
Polly's brain continued to teem with sinister ideas.
"I shall make Mr. Talbot's bed so that the clothes will come off at the foot every night. He will remonstrate. I shall tell him that he kicks them off, and intimate that his conscience troubles him, or he would never be so restless. He will glare. I shall promise to do better, yet the clothes will come off worse and worse, and at last, perfectly disheartened, he will go. I shall tell Mr. Greenwood at the breakfast-table, what I have been longing for months to tell him, that we can hear him snore, distinctly, through the partition. He will go. I shall put cold milk in Mrs. Caldwell's coffee every morning. I shall mean well, you know, but I shall forget. She will know that I mean well, and that it is only girlish absent-mindedness, but she will not endure it very long; she will go. And so, by the exercise of a little ingenuity, they will depart one by one, remarking that Mrs. Oliver's boarding-house is not what it used to be; that Pauline is growing a little 'slack.'"
"Polly!" and Mrs. Oliver half rose from the sofa, "I will not allow you to call this a boarding-house in that tone of voice."
"A boarding-house, as I take it," argued Polly, "is a house where the detestable human vipers known as boarders are 'taken in and done for.'"
"But we have always prided ourselves on having it exactly like a family," said her mother plaintively. "You know we have not omitted a single refinement of the daintiest home-life, no matter at what cost of labor and thought."
"Certainly, that's the point,--and there you are, a sofa-invalid, and here am I with my disposition ruined for life; such a wreck in temper that I could blow up the boarders with dynamite and sleep peacefully after it."
"Now be reasonable, little daughter. Think how kind and grateful the boarders have been (at least almost always), how appreciative of everything we have done for them."
"Of course; it is n't every day they can secure an--an--elderly Juno like you to carve meat for them, or a--well, just for the sake of completing the figure of speech--a blooming Hebe like me (I 've always wondered why it was n't Shebe!) to dispense their tea and coffee; to say nothing of broma for Mr. Talbot, cocoa for Mr. Greenwood, cambric tea for Mrs. Hastings, and hot water for the Darlings. I have to keep a schedule, and refer to it three times a day.