“You know it, Polly; I heard you singing it yesterday.”

(The soldiers were coming up the avenue.)

    “The royal tiger will be there,
    The ring-tailed monkey
    And the polar bear;
    The royal tiger will be there,” etc.

“I’ll cross my heart, I dunno it.  I natchelly ’spize babies, ennyhow.  If I wuz er blue-gum nigger, I’d bite ’em,” said Polly, showing her teeth viciously.

“Well, then,” said Roberta in desperation, “I’ll give you my red sash that you think so pretty; I will indeed.”

That did the work; Polly’s love of finery was intense.  She began to sing in a surly tone, that straightened out as visions suggested by the song flitted before her.  The circus was her delight.

If the soldiers, in passing, noticed the incongruous lullaby, they made no comment.  Possibly, they were not family men.

They went through the house; pushed their bayonets in the mattresses, lifted them up and looked underneath; searched every nook and corner below stairs, then tramped up.  Roberta called to Polly: 

“Is the baby asleep, Polly?”

“No; yes.  Lawdy, Lawdy!  I’ze gwiner drap it, sho’; it’s sliden’.”

Roberta looked through the window at the counterfeit baby; she flew out on the porch, took it away from the awkward nurse, saying: 

“You will never make a nurse, Polly; there’s no use trying to teach you;” carried it in and laid it on the dismantled bed, just in time to prevent the drapery from slipping off and exposing the shining metal.  She darkened the room, and sat there patting it and singing to it till the search was over and the soldiers gone.  Then the child put her head in her mamma’s lap, and sobbed from pure nervousness.  But she had kept her promise, the loyal little soul.  In years to come, she made and kept another promise, that the first one led to, as links in a chain.

In the muddy back yard Polly was strutting, proud as a peacock, in her scarlet sash.  The ends swept the ground, and she glanced back over her shoulder at them every step.  Roberta burst out laughing, Polly looked so ridiculous.

“O, Mamma!” she said, “do call Polly in and sing to her about—­

    “The little girl that was so vain,
    Strutting up a dirty lane,
    With mamma’s best dress for a train,
    O, fie, fie, fie!  O, fie, fie, fie! 
    She’d better sweep cob-webs from the sky;
    She’d better bake, she’d better stew,
    She’d better knit, she’d better sew;
    O, fie, fie, fie!  O, fie, fie, fie! 
    The little girl put her finger in her eye,
    Looked down at her shoe, and said ‘boo-oo.’”

Now I am going to tell you how the soldier boy kept his promise.