Polly Oliver's Problem by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

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_Item_: A firm chin. She will take her own way if she can possibly get
it; but _item_; a sweet, lovable mouth framed in dimples; a mouth that
breaks into smiles at the slightest provocation, no matter how dreary
the outlook; a mouth that quivers at the first tender word, and so the
best of all correctives to the determined little chin below.

_Item_: A distinctly saucy nose; an aggressive, impertinent, spirited
little nose, with a few freckles on it; a nose that probably leads its
possessor into trouble occasionally.

_Item_: Two bright eyes, a trifle overproud and willful, perhaps, but
candid and full of laughter.

_Item_: A head of brilliant, auburn hair; lively, independent, frisky
hair, each glittering thread standing out by itself and asserting its
own individuality; tempestuous hair that never "stays put;" capricious
hair that escapes hairpins and comes down unexpectedly; hoydenish hair
that makes the meekest hats look daring.

For the rest, a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including
elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered
hands tanned a very honest brown,--the hands of a person who loves
beauty.

Polly Oliver's love of beautiful things was a passion, and one that had
little gratification; but luckily, though good music, pictures, china,
furniture, and "purple and fine linen" were all conspicuous by their
absence, she could feast without money and without price on the
changeful loveliness of the Santa Ynez mountains, the sapphire tints of
the placid Pacific, and the gorgeous splendor of the Californian
wild-flowers, so that her sense of beauty never starved.

Her hand was visible in the modest sitting-room where she now sat with
her mother; for it was pretty and homelike, although its simple
decorations and furnishings had been brought together little by little
during a period of two years; so that the first installments were all
worn out, Polly was wont to remark plaintively, before the last
additions made their appearance.

The straw matting had Japanese figures on it, while a number of rugs
covered the worn places, and gave it an opulent look. The
table-covers, curtains, and portieres were of blue jean worked in
outline embroidery, and Mrs. Oliver's couch had as many pillows as that
of an oriental princess; for Polly's summers were spent camping in a
canon, and she embroidered sofa-cushions and draperies with frenzy
during these weeks of out-of-door life.

Upon the cottage piano was a blue Canton ginger-jar filled with
branches of feathery bamboo that spread its lace-like foliage far and
wide over the ceiling and walls, quite covering the large spot where
the roof had leaked. Various stalks of tropical-looking palms,
distributed artistically about, concealed the gaping wounds in the
walls, inflicted by the Benton children, who had once occupied this
same apartment. Mexican water-jars, bearing peacock feathers, screened
Mr. Benton's two favorite places for scratching matches. The lounge
was the sort of lounge that looks well only between two windows, but
Polly was obliged to place it across the corner where she really needed
the table, because in that position it shielded from the public view
the enormous black spots on the wall where Reginald Benton had flung
the ink-bottle at his angel sister Pansy Belle.

Then there was an umbrella-lamp bestowed by a boarder whom Mrs. Oliver
had nursed through typhoid fever; a banjo; plenty of books and
magazines; and an open fireplace, with a great pitcher of yellow
wild-flowers standing between the old-fashioned brass andirons.

Little Miss Oliver's attitude on the question of the boarders must
stand quite without justification.

"It is a part of Polly," sighed her mother, "and must be borne with
Christian fortitude."

Colonel Oliver had never fully recovered from a wound received in the
last battle of the civil war, and when he was laid to rest in a quiet
New England churchyard, so much of Mrs. Oliver's heart was buried with
him that it was difficult to take up the burden of life with any sort
of courage. At last her delicate health prompted her to take the baby
daughter, born after her husband's death, and go to southern
California, where she invested her small property in a house in Santa
Barbara. She could not add to her income by any occupation that kept
her away from the baby; so the boarders followed as a matter of course
(a house being suitable neither for food nor clothing), and a
constantly changing family of pleasant people helped her to make both
ends meet, and to educate the little daughter as she grew from babyhood
into childhood.

Now, as Polly had grown up among the boarders, most of whom petted her,
no one can account for her slightly ungrateful reception of their
good-will; but it is certain that the first time she was old enough to
be trusted at the table, she grew very red in the face, slipped down
from her high chair, and took her bowl of bread and milk on to the
porch. She was followed and gently reasoned with, but her only
explanation was that she did n't "yike to eat wiv so many peoples."
Persuasion bore no fruit, and for a long time Miss Polly ate in
solitary grandeur. Indeed, the feeling increased rather than
diminished, until the child grew old enough to realize her mother's
burden, when with passionate and protecting love she put her strong
young shoulders under the load and lifted her share, never so very
prettily or gracefully,--it is no use trying to paint a halo round
Polly's head,--but with a proud courage and a sort of desperate resolve
to be as good as she could, which was not very good, she would have
told you.

She would come back from the beautiful home of her friend, Bell
Winship, and look about on her own surroundings, never with scorn, or
sense of bitterness,--she was too sensible and sweet-natured for
that,--but with an inward rebellion against the existing state of
things, and a secret determination to create a better one, if God would
only give her power and opportunity. But this pent-up feeling only
showed itself to her mother in bursts of impulsive nonsense, at which
Mrs. Oliver first laughed and then sighed.

"Oh, for a little, little breakfast-table!" Polly would say, as she
flung herself on her mother's couch, and punched the pillows
desperately. "Oh, for a father to say 'Steak, Polly dear?' instead of
my asking, 'Steakorchop?' over and over every morning! Oh, for a
lovely, grown-up, black-haired sister, who would have hundreds of
lovers, and let me stay in the room when they called! Oh, for a tiny
baby brother, fat and dimpled, who would crow, and spill milk on the
tablecloth, and let me sit on the floor and pick up the things he threw
down! But instead of that, a new, big, strange family, different
people every six months, people who don't like each other, and have to
be seated at opposite ends of the table; ladies whose lips tremble with
disappointment if they don't get the second joint of the chicken, and
gentlemen who are sulky if any one else gets the liver. Oh, mamma, I
am sixteen now, and it will soon be time for me to begin taking care of
you; but I warn you, I shall never do it by means of the boarders!"

"Are you so weak and proud, little daughter, as to be ashamed because I
have taken care of you these sixteen years 'by means of the boarders,'
as you say?"

"No, no, mamma! Don't think so badly of me as that. That feeling was
outgrown long ago. Do 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 _crepe 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 and held
it for an hour while I sorted the berries. Result: a hideous stain a
foot and a half in diameter, to say nothing of the circumference. Mr.
Greenwood suggested oxalic acid. I applied it, and removed both the
stain and the dress in the following complete manner;" and Polly put
her brilliant head through an immense circular hole in the front
breadth of the skirt.

"It 's hopeless, is n't it? for of course a patch won't look well,"
said Margery.

"Hopeless? Not a bit. You see this pretty yellow and white striped
lawn? I have made a long, narrow apron of it, and ruffled it all
round. I pin it to my waist thus, and the hole is covered. But it
looks like an apron, and how do I contrive to throw the public off the
scent? I add a yoke and sash of the striped lawn, and people see
simply a combination-dress. I do the designing, and my beloved little
mother there will do the sewing; forgetting her precious Polly's
carelessness in making the hole, and remembering only her cleverness in
covering it."

"Capital!" said Margery; "it will be prettier than ever. Oh dear! that
dress was new when we had our last lovely summer in the canon. Shall
we ever go again, all together, I wonder? Just think how we are all
scattered,--the Winships traveling in Europe (I 'll read you Bell's
last letter by and by); Geoffrey Strong studying at Leipsic; Jack
Howard at Harvard, with Elsie and her mother watching over him in
Cambridge; Philip and I on the ranch as usual, and you here. We are so
divided that it does n't seem possible that we can ever have a complete
reunion, does it?"

"No," said Polly, looking dreamily at the humming-birds hovering over
the honeysuckle; "and if we should, everything would be different.
Bless dear old Bell's heart! What a lovely summer she must be having!
I wonder what she will do."

"Do?" echoed Margery.

"Yes; it always seemed to me that Bell Winship would do something in
the world; that she would never go along placidly like other girls, she
has so many talents."

"Yes; but so long as they have plenty of money, Dr. and Mrs. Winship
would probably never encourage her in doing anything."

"It would be all the better if she could do something because she loved
it, and with no thought of earning a living by it. Is n't it odd that
I who most need the talents should have fewer than any one of our dear
little group? Bell can write, sing, dance, or do anything else, in
fact; Elsie can play like an angel; you can draw; but it seems to me I
can do nothing well enough to earn money by it; and that is precisely
what I must do."

"You 've never had any special instruction, Polly dear, else you could
sing as well as Bell, or play as well as Elsie."

"Well, I must soon decide. Mamma says next summer, when I am
seventeen, she will try to spend a year in San Francisco and let me
study regularly for some profession. The question is, what?--or
whether to do something without study. I read in a magazine the other
day that there are now three hundred or three thousand, I can't
remember which, vocations open to women. If it were even three hundred
I could certainly choose one to my liking, and there would be two
hundred and ninety-nine left over for the other girls. Mrs. Weeks is
trying to raise silkworms. That would be rather nice, because the
worms would be silent partners in the business and do most of the work."

"But you want something without any risks, you know," said Margery
sagely. "You would have to buy ground for the silkworms, and set out
the mulberries, and then a swarm of horrid insects might happen along
and devour the plants before the worms began spinning."

"'Competition is the life of trade,'" said Polly. "No, that is n't
what I mean--'Nothing venture, nothing have,' that's it. Then how
would hens do? Ever so many women raise hens."

"Hens have diseases, and they never lay very well when you have to sell
the eggs. By the way, Clarence Jones, who sings in the choir,--you
know, the man with the pink cheeks and corn-silk hair,--advertises in
the 'Daily Press' for a 'live partner.' Now, there 's a chance on an
established hen-ranch, if he does n't demand capital or experience."

"It's a better chance for Miss Ferguson. But she does n't like Mr.
Jones, because when he comes to call, his coat-pockets are always
bulging with brown paper packages of a hen-food that he has just
invented. The other day, when he came to see her, she was out, and he
handed me his card. It had a picture and advertisement of 'The Royal
Dish-faced Berkshire Pig' on it; and I 'm sure, by her expression when
she saw it, that she will never be his 'live partner.' No, I don't
think I 'll have an out-of-door occupation, it's so trying to the
complexion. Now, how about millinery? I could be an apprentice, and
gradually rise until I imported everything direct from Paris."

"But, Polly," objected Margery, "you know you never could tie a bow, or
even put a ribbon on your sailor hat."

"But I could learn. Do you suppose all the milliners were called to
their work by a consciousness of genius? Perish the thought! If that
were true, there wouldn't be so many hideous hats in the shop windows.
However, I don't pine for millinery; it's always a struggle for me to
wear a hat myself."

"You 've done beautifully the last year or two, dear, and you 've
reaped the reward of virtue, for you 've scarcely a freckle left."

"Oh, that isn't hats," rejoined Polly, "that's the law of compensation.
When I was younger, and did n't take the boarders so much to heart, I
had freckles given to me for a cross; but the moment I grew old enough
to see the boarders in their true light and note their effect on mamma,
the freckles disappeared. Now, here 's an idea. I might make a
complexion lotion for a living. Let me see what I 've been advised by
elderly ladies to use in past years: ammonia, lemon-juice, cucumbers,
morning dew, milk, pork rinds, kerosene, and a few other household
remedies. Of course I 'm not sure which did the work, but why could
n't I mix them all in equal parts,--if they would mix, you know, and
let those stay out that would n't,--and call it the 'Olivera Complexion
Lotion'? The trade-mark might be a cucumber, a lemon, and a morning
dew-drop, _rampant_, and a frightened little brown spot _couchant_.
Then on the neat label pasted on the bottles above the trade-mark there
might be a picture of a spotted girl,--that's Miss Oliver before using
her lotion,--and a copy of my last photograph,--that's Miss Oliver
radiant in beauty after using her lotion."

Margery laughed, as she generally did at Polly's nonsense.

"That sounds very attractive, but if you are anxious for an elegant and
dignified occupation which shall restore your mother to her ancestral
position, it certainly has its defects."

"I know everything has its defects, everything except one, and I won't
believe that has a single weak point."

"Oh, Polly, you deceiver! You have a secret leaning toward some
particular thing, after all!"

"Yes; though I have n't talked it over fully yet, even with mamma, lest
she should think it one of my wild schemes; but, Margery, I want with
all my heart to be a kindergartner like Miss Mary Denison. There would
be no sting to me in earning my living, if only I could do it by
working among poor, ragged, little children, as she does. I run in and
stay half an hour with her whenever I can, and help the babies with
their sewing or weaving, and I always study and work better myself
afterward,--I don't know whether it's the children, or Miss Denison, or
the place, or all three. And the other day, when I was excused from my
examinations, I stayed the whole morning in the kindergarten. When it
was time for the games, and they were all on the circle, they began
with a quiet play they call 'Silent Greeting,' and oh, Margery, they
chose me to come in, of their own accord! When I walked into the
circle to greet that smallest Walker baby my heart beat like a
trip-hammer, I was so afraid I should do something wrong, and they
would never ask me in again. Then we played 'The Hen and Chickens,'
and afterward something about the birds in the greenwood; and one of
the make-believe birds flew to me (I was a tree, you know, a whispering
elm-tree), and built its nest in my branches, and then I smoothed its
feathers and sang to it as the others had done, and it was like heaven!
After the play was over, we modeled clay birds; and just as we were
making the tables tidy, Professor Hohlweg came in and asked Miss
Denison to come into the large hall to play for the marching, as the
music-teacher was absent. Then what did Miss Denison do but turn to me
and say, 'Miss Oliver, you get on so nicely with the children, would
you mind telling them some little story for me? I shall be gone only
ten or fifteen minutes.' Oh, Margery, it was awful! I was more
frightened than when I was asked to come into the circle; but the
children clapped their hands and cried, 'Yes, yes, tell us a story!' I
could only think of 'The Hen that Hatched Ducks,' but I sat down and
began, and, as I talked, I took my clay bird and molded it into a hen,
so that they would look at me whether they listened or not. Of course,
one of the big seven-year-old boys began to whisper and be restless,
but I handed him a large lump of clay and asked him to make a nest and
some eggs for my hen, and that soon absorbed his attention. They
listened so nicely,--you can hardly believe how nicely they listened!
When I finished I looked at the clock. It had been nine minutes, and I
could n't think what to do the other dreadful minutes till Miss Denison
should come back. At last my eye fell on the blackboard, and that gave
me an idea. I drew a hen's beak and then a duck's, a hen's foot and
then a duck's, to show them the difference. Just then Miss Denison
came in softly, and I confess I was bursting with pride and delight.
There was the blackboard with the sketches, not very good ones, it is
true, the clay hen and nest and eggs, and all the children sitting
quietly in their wee red chairs. And Miss Denison said, 'How charming
of you to carry out the idea of the morning so nicely! My dear little
girl, you were made for this sort of thing, did you know it?'"

"Well, I should n't think you had patience enough for any sort of
teaching," said Margery candidly.

"Neither did I suppose so myself, and I have n't any patience to spare,
that is, for boarders, or dishes, or beds; but I love children so
dearly that they never try my patience as other things do."

"You have had the play side of the kindergarten, Polly, while Miss
Denison had the care. There must be a work-a-day side to it; I'm sure
Miss Denison very often looks tired to death."

"Of course!" cried Polly. "I know it 's hard work; but who cares
whether a thing is hard or not, if one loves it? I don't mind work; I
only mind working at something I dislike and can never learn to like.
Why, Margery, at the Sunday-school picnics you go off in the broiling
sun and sit on a camp-chair and sketch, while I play Fox and Geese with
the children, and each of us pities the other and thinks she must be
dying with heat. It 's just the difference between us! You carry your
easel and stool and paint-boxes and umbrella up the steepest hill, and
never mind if your back aches; I bend over Miss Denison's children with
their drawing or building, and never think of my back-ache, do you see?"

"Yes; but I always keep up my spirits by thinking that though I may be
tired and discouraged, it is worth while because it is Art I am working
at; and for the sake of being an artist I ought to be willing to endure
anything. You would n't have that feeling to inspire and help you."

"I should like to know why I would n't," exclaimed Polly, with flashing
eyes. "I should like to know why teaching may not be an art. I
confess I don't know exactly what an artist is, or rather what the
dictionary definition of art is; but sit down in Miss Burke's room at
the college; you can't stay there half an hour without thinking that,
rather than have her teach you anything, you would be an ignorant
little cannibal on a desert island! She does n't know how, and there
is nothing beautiful about it. But look at Miss Denison! When she
comes into her kindergarten it is like the sunrise, and she makes
everything blossom that she touches. It is all so simple and sweet
that it seems as if anybody could do it; but when you try it you find
that it is quite different. Whether she plays or sings, or talks or
works with the children, it is perfect. 'It all seems so easy when you
do it,' I said to her yesterday, and she pointed to the quotation for
the day in her calendar. It was a sentence from George MacDonald:
'Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.' Now it may be that Miss
Mary Denison is only an angel; but I think that she 's an artist."

"On second thoughts, perhaps you are right in your meaning of the word,
though it does n't follow that all teachers are artists."

"No; nor that all the painters are," retorted Polly. "Think of that
poor Miss Thomas in your outdoor class. Last week, when you were
sketching the cow in front of the old barn, I sat behind her for half
an hour. Her barn grew softer and softer and her cow harder and
harder, till when she finished, the barn looked as if it were molded in
jelly and the cow as if it were carved in red sandstone."

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