Snip and Snap added their society in Miss Pomeroy’s room. Suddenly Snip vanished, and Snap seemed much distressed. Arctura, who had been struggling to reduce an unaccountable lump on her side of the bed, made an exclamation, and drew out the sheets and blankets, and Snip, breathless but unvanquished, slid to the floor.
“My land!” ejaculated Miss Green, surveying the kitten with apparent disgust. “If you haven’t got any more sense than to go where you’ll be made up with a bed, it don’t seem as if you were worth raising!” But she took Snip up in her arms and stroked him, receiving for reward a vigorous scratch on the nose.
“Well, now, aren’t you the ungratefullest little piece that ever was?” said Arctura, setting him hastily down, and tenderly caressing her injured feature. “Didn’t you know to-morrow was Sunday and the minister coming to dinner? You’ve settled one thing. I shouldn’t be willing to sit down to a meal, facing him, all battered up this way. I shall tell Miss Hetty, so she needn’t consider it for a minute,” said Miss Green firmly, as she led the way to the kitchen.
There were two squash pies and two apple pies to be made that morning, and Polly was allowed to help with the rolling, and to crimp all the edges of the crust with a delightful little wheel. Arctura watched her with the first pie, but after that she bustled about the kitchen singing a gay little refrain.
“Oh--she--was--as--beautiful as a butterfly, And as proud as a queen, Was pretty little Polly Perkins, Of Abingdon Green,”
sang Arctura over and over again, and little Polly Prentiss listened with delight.
“You have a splendid voice, haven’t you, Miss Arctura?” she said, when at last the song stopped as the pies were put in the oven. “And what pretty words there are to that tune.”
“My voice isn’t anything now to what it was,” said Miss Green, evidently much pleased. “I can’t rely on it as I once could. When my brother John, that lives out West, and I were in our teens we used to be called for far and near, whenever there was music wanted. He had a good tenor voice, and I could sing way up above the staff without straining my tones a mite. But now I’m getting old and I have to bear just as light as I can on the high notes, and there’s a number down towards G on the second line that are apt to fail me when I’m least expecting it,” said Arctura, and Polly thought her voice sounded a little sad.