e more at home, prettier
'n this."

"Why-e-e-e!" said I. "Truly honest?"

"Why, yes!" said Jessie. "How many've you?"

"Just a horrid old Leghorn!" said I. "And it's been pressed over and
over, and the trimmings washed, and I can't bear it!"

And I was telling her about the chip jockey hat that Sally Carroll's
aunt bought her for a birthday present, when the buggy came to the
door.

"Come, say good-bye to the little girl, my love," said the lady, smiling
down at me.

Jessie threw her arms around my neck and whispered that I was the best
girl she ever knew, and that she should write me a letter when she got
to Boston, and hopped in.

The lady shook hands with Ma, and thanked her for being so kind, and
then turned to Polly and said, softly:

"You good Polly, I _must_ do something for you. Wont you let me?"--and
put her hand in her pocket.

I never saw Polly so mad but once before, and that was when Tom chucked
Queen Victoria into the churn, because she wouldn't let him have but a
quarter of an apple-pie to take to school. I mean Polly wouldn't. She
walked into the buttery, and banged the door behind her as hard as ever
she could.

The lady didn't say anything, but her cheeks were rather pink, and she
bent and kissed me as if to hide them. Then Pa helped her into the
buggy, and they drove away.

The next week, Jed went to the grist-mill, the other end of the village,
with some buckwheat to be ground, and, calling at the post-office coming
home, he found an express-box from Boston, with "Miss Mary Ann Murphy,
Redfield, Massachusetts," printed on it in large black letters. He knew
that was Polly's name, he said; and never having heard tell of but one
Mary Ann Murphy in these parts, he hoisted it into the wagon.

Polly was washing by the kitchen-door as he rattled in at the gate.

"Hullo, there!" he sang out. "Here's a box that's a-wantin' Miss Mary
Ann Murphy!"

"Git along wid yer nonsinse!" Polly said, scrubbing at one of Tom's blue
gingham shirts. For Jed is such a fellow for fooling that you never can
be sure when to believe him, and Polly thought it was a box of starch,
or else of soap, that Ma had ordered from the grocery, and that Jed was
only trying to get her to come and lug it into the house for him, so he
could drive straight on to the barn.

Ma had set me to picking currants for jelly that morning, and I was
getting over the vegetable-garden fence with a heaping pail on each arm
when Jed spoke