"You mustn't mind my staring, dear," said Madam, softly pinching her rosy cheek. "I haven't seen a little girl for so long; it does my old eyes good to look at you."
Polly thought it a very odd speech, and couldn't help saying, "Aren't Fan and Maud little girls, too?"
"Oh, dear, no! Not what I call little girls. Fan has been a young lady for two years, and Maud is a spoiled baby. Your mother's a very sensible woman, my child."
"What a very queer old lady!" thought Polly, but she said, "Yes, ma'am," respectfully, and gazed at the fire.
"You don't understand what I mean, do you?" asked Madam, still holding her by the chin.
"No, ma'am; not quite."
"Well, dear, I'll tell you. In my day, children of fourteen or fifteen didn't dress in the height of fashion, go to parties as nearly like grown people as possible, lead idle, giddy, unhealthy lives, and get blasé at twenty. We were little folks till eighteen or so; we worked and studied, dressed and played like children, honoured our parents, and our days were much longer in the land than now, it seems to me."
At the end of her speech, the old lady seemed to forget Polly entirely. She sat patting the plump little hand that lay in her own, while looking up at a faded portrait of an old gentleman with a ruffled shirt and a queue.
"Was he your father, Madam?"
"Yes, dear; my honoured father. I did up his frills to the day of his death, and the first money I ever earned was five dollars, which he offered as a prize to whichever of his six girls would lay the handsomest darn in his silk stockings."
"How proud you must have been!" cried Polly, leaning on the old lady's knee with an eager, interested face.
"Yes, and we all learned to make bread, cook, wore little chintz gowns, and were as gay and hearty as kittens. All lived to be grandmothers and grandfathers; and I'm the last—seventy next birthday, my dear—and not worn out yet, though daughter Shaw is an invalid at forty."
"That's the way I was brought up, and that's why Fan calls me old-fashioned, I suppose. Tell me more about your father, please; I like it," said Polly.
"Say 'father.' We never called him papa; and if one of my brothers had addressed him as 'governor,' as boys do now, I really think he'd have been cut off with a shilling."
Madam raised her voice as she said this, and nodded significantly; but a mild snore from the other room seemed to assure her that it was a waste of shot to fire in that direction.
Before she could continue, Fanny came in with the joyful news that Clara Bird had invited them both to the theatre that very evening, and would call for them at seven o'clock. Polly was so excited by this sudden plunge into the delights of city life that she flew about like a distracted butterfly, hardly knowing what was happening, until she found herself seated before the great green curtain in the brilliant theatre.
Old Mr. Bird sat on one side, Fanny on the other, and both left her alone, for which she was very grateful, as her whole attention was absorbed by the dazzling scene around her.