Miss Pomeroy cordially approved this plan. After a few minutes she went out on the porch, and soon she and Polly started for a walk. Miss Pomeroy was a little troubled with rheumatism, so the walk was not a brisk one, but Polly stepped soberly along at her side, and together they talked of the birds and the flowers. They saw and heard eight birds that day, and Polly recounted them to Arctura after supper--a robin, a crow, a ground sparrow, a song sparrow, a blue jay, a phœbe-bird, a red-winged blackbird, and a thrush.
“Spring is upon us without a doubt,” said Polly, joyfully quoting Miss Pomeroy. “And, oh, it’s so pretty along the edges of the road, Miss Arctura!”
“How’d you like to go off into the woods with your book, some day?” suggested Miss Green, and she was mystified by the look that came into the child’s eyes.
“I’d like to very much, if Miss Pomeroy thinks best,” said Polly, quietly, but her heart was dancing.
Meanwhile Miss Pomeroy was looking at the top sheet of Polly’s pad, laid on the dictionary, “for I think I will find out about those words before I read any more,” Polly had said. This was the list: “Acquirement, mercenary, punctilious, sagacity, concomitants, unsullied, devastated, macadamization, trivial, boulevard, burgher, martello, vestige, erroneous, consecutive, assigned.”
“You understand all the words you have read except these?” questioned Miss Pomeroy, with her keen eyes on Polly’s flushed face, as the little girl straightened up from her study of the big dictionary when bedtime came.
“No, ma’am,” said Polly, honestly, “but I could guess most of the other long ones, and I wanted to get on with the book.” Then suddenly the little girl felt very brave. “Would--would Eleanor have known all those words without the dictionary? all of them?” she ventured.
“My dear child,” said Miss Pomeroy, gently--and she did not look as if she were at all vexed--“my dear little Mary, there are several of those words I myself should be obliged to look up in the dictionary before I dared try to tell anyone exactly what they meant. Now run along to bed, and get to sleep as fast as ever you can,” and Miss Pomeroy bent her head and kissed the bright face upturned to hers.