Like the North American Indian, the race of Pollies is fast going out of American life.  You read an advertisement of “an American servant who wants a place in a genteel family,” and visions of something common in American households, when you were children, come up to your mind’s eye.  Without considering the absurdity of an American girl calling herself by such a name, your eyes fill with tears at the thought of the faithful and loving service of years ago, when neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor death itself separated the members of the household, but the nurse-maid was the beloved friend, living and dying under the same roof that witnessed her untiring and faithful devotion.

So, when you look after this “American servant,” you find alien blood, lip-service, a surface-warmth that flatters, but does not delude,—­a fidelity that fails you in sickness, or increased toil, or the prospect of higher wages; and you say to the “American servant,”—­

“How long have you been in Boston?”

“Born in Boston, Ma’m,—­in Eliot Street, Ma’m.”

So was not Polly.  Polly had lived with us always.  She had a farm of her own, and needn’t have “lived out” five minutes, unless she had chosen.  But she did choose it, and chose to keep her place.  And that was a true friend,—­in a humble position, possibly, yet one of her own choosing.  She rejoiced and wept with us, knew all about us,—­corresponded regularly with us when away, and wrote poetry.  She had a fair mind, great shrewdness, and kept a journal of facts.  We loved her dearly,—­next to each other, and a hundred times better than we did Aunt Allen or any of them.

Of course, as the day wore on, and afternoon came, and then almost night came, and still the bell had not once rung,—­not once!—­Polly was not the person to express or to permit the least surprise.  Not Caleb Balderstone himself had a sharper eye to the “honor of the family.” Why it was left to the doctrine of chances to decide. That it was grew clearer and clearer every hour, as every hour came slowly by, unladen with box or package, even a bouquet.

Betsy Ann had grinned a great many times, and asked Polly over and over, “Where the presents all was?” and, “When I was to Miss Russell’s, and Miss Sally was merried, the things come in with a rush,—­silver, and gold, and money, ever so much!”

However, here Polly snubbed her, and told her to “shet up her head quick.  Most of the presents was come long ago.”

“Such a piece of work as I hed to ghet up that critter’s mouth!” said Polly, laughing, as she assisted Laura in putting the last graces to my simple toilet before tea.

“There, now, Miss Sampson to be!  I declare to man, you never looked better.

  “’Roses red, violets blue,
  Pinks is pootty, and so be you.’”

“How did you shut it, Polly?” said Laura, who was very much surprised, like myself, at the non-arrivals, and who constantly imagined she heard the bell.  Ten arrivals we had both counted on,—­ten, certainly,—­fifteen, probably.