Polly Olivers Problem | Page 8

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!"
"It is easy to 'dream noble things,' dear, but hard to do them 'all day
long.' My own feeling is, if one reaches the results one is struggling for,
and does one's work as well as it lies in one to do it, that keeping
boarders is as good service as any other bit of the world's work. One is
not always permitted to choose the beautiful or glorious task.
Sometimes all one can do is to make the humble action fine by doing it
'as it is done in heaven.' Remember, 'they also serve who only stand and
wait.'"
"Yes, mamma," said Polly meekly; "but," stretching out her young

arms hopefully and longingly, "it must be that they also serve who
stand and dare, and I 'm going to try that first,--then I 'll wait, if God
wants me to."
"What if God wants you to wait first, little daughter?"
Polly hid her face in the sofa-cushions and did not answer.
CHAPTER II.
FORECASTING THE FUTURE.
Two of Mrs. Oliver's sitting-room windows looked out on the fig-trees,
and the third on a cosy piazza corner framed in passion-vines, where at
the present moment stood a round table holding a crystal bowl of Gold
of Ophir roses, a brown leather portfolio, and a dish of apricots.
Against the table leaned an old Spanish guitar with a yellow ribbon
round its neck, and across the corner hung a gorgeous hammock of
Persian colored threads, with two or three pillows of canary-colored
China silk in one end. A bamboo lounging-chair and a Shaker rocker
completed the picture; and the passer-by could generally see Miss
Anita Ferguson reclining in the one, and a young (but not Wise) man
from the East in the other. It was not always the same young man any
more than the decorations were always of the same color.
"That's another of my troubles," said Polly to her friend Margery Noble,
pulling up the window-shade one afternoon and pointing to the now
empty "cosy corner." "I don't mind Miss Ferguson's sitting there,
though it used always to be screened off for my doll-house, and I love
it dearly; but she pays to sit there, and she ought to do it; besides, she
looks prettier there than any one else. Isn't it lovely? The other day she
had pink oleanders in the bowl, the cushions turned the pink side
up,--you see they are canary and rose-color,--a pink muslin dress, and
the guitar trimmed with a fringe of narrow pink ribbons. She was a
dream, Margery! But she does n't sit there with her young men when I
am at school, nor when I am helping Ah Foy in the dining-room, nor,
of course, when we are at table. She sits there from four to six in the
afternoon and in the evening, the only times I have with mamma in this

room. We are obliged to keep the window closed, lest we should
overhear the conversation. That is tiresome enough in warm weather.
You see the other windows are shaded by the fig-trees, so here we sit,
in Egyptian darkness, mamma and I, during most of the pleasant
afternoons. And if anything ever came of it, we would n't mind, but
nothing ever does. There have been so many young men,--I could n't
begin to count them, but they have worn out the seats of four
chairs,--and why does n't one of them take her away? Then we could
have a nice, plain young lady who would sit quietly on the front steps
with the old people, and who would n't want me to carry messages for
her three times a day."
At the present moment, however, Miss Anita Ferguson, clad in a black
habit, with a white rose in her buttonhole, and a neat black derby with a
scarf of white crêpe de chine wound about it, had gone on the mesa for
a horseback ride, so Polly and Margery had borrowed the cosy corner
for a chat.
Margery was crocheting a baby's afghan, and Polly was almost
obscured by a rumpled, yellow dress which lay in her lap.
"You observe my favorite yellow gown?" she asked.
"Yes, what have you done to it?"
"Gin Sing picked blackberries in the colander. I, supposing the said
colander to be a pan with the usual bottom, took it in my lap