Polly opened her eyes to see Martha looking down at her.  “Oh, Martha, Martha,” she cried, “if you hadn’t waked me, I should have got it.  I’d almost found it, and in a little minute I’d ‘a’ had it sure.”

“Had what?” asked Martha.

“Janey’s valentine;” and, sitting up, Polly told her dream.

Martha laughed till the tears came.  “You are the funniest young one we ever had here,” was her comment, when she caught her breath.  “Some time you’ll dream you’re an heiress, and wake up counting out your money to buy valentines with.”

“What’s an heiress?” inquired Polly.

“Oh, a girl that has a bankful of money,” replied Martha, carelessly.

Polly gave one of her long-drawn “O—­hs,” then slipped out of bed, and began to dress so slowly that Martha said to her,—­

“What are you dreaming about now, Polly?”

But Polly didn’t answer.  She was too busy pulling on her stockings, and thinking of something else that Martha had said, and this “something” was “a girl with a bankful of money.”  Martha little suspected what effect her words had had, little thought what a fine scheme she had set going.  If she had, the scheme would certainly never have been carried out, or never have been carried out as Polly planned it.  And Polly knew this perfectly well, and kept as still as a mouse all through breakfast,—­so still that the matron, Mrs. Banks, asked, “Don’t you feel well, Polly?” whereat Polly choked over her oatmeal as she confusedly answered, “Yes, ’m.”

If it had been any other child, Mrs. Banks would have suspected that there was some mischief brewing behind this stillness; but Polly had never been given to mischief, so she was not further questioned or observed, and thus left to herself she scampered back to the dormitory after the chamber-work was done, and, going straight to a small bureau that stood between Jane’s bed and her own, she cautiously pulled out the lower drawer, and took from it a little toy house.  This pretty toy house was nothing more nor less than a child’s bank that had been given to Polly one Christmas, and into which she had dropped the pennies that had been bestowed upon her from time to time.  Polly had long yearned for a paint-box; and whenever she went out, she used to stop at a certain shop-window where these tempting things were displayed, and wonder how much they cost.  One day she summoned up courage to go in and ask the price of the smallest.

“Twenty-five cents,” the clerk told her.  Polly at first was dismayed.  Twenty-five cents seemed a vast sum to her.  But it was a long time yet to next Christmas, and perhaps by then she might find even as much as that in her bank.  This hope had warmed her heart for weeks, so that when she was smarting under the first sense of disappointment about the valentines, she consoled herself with the thought of the little paint-box that might soon be hers.  But when Martha had said, “Some time you’ll