Polly had donned a trailing black silk skirt of her mother’s, with a white chuddah shawl for a court train, and a white lace waist to top it.  Her hair was wound into a knot on the crown of her head and adorned with three long black ostrich feathers, which soared to a great height, and presented a most magnificent and queenly appearance.

Tom Mills, whose father was four times a millionaire, wondered why they never had such gay times at his home, and tried to fancy his sister Blanche sparkling and glowing and beaming over the prospect of earning twenty-five dollars a month.

Then, when bedtime came, Polly and her mother talked it all over in the dark.

“Oh, mamacita, I am so happy!  It’s such a lovely beginning, and I shall be so glad, so glad to do it!  I hope Mrs. Bird did n’t invent the plan for my good, for I have been frightfully shabby each time she has seen me, but she says she thinks of nothing but the children.  Now we will have some pretty things, won’t we?  And oh! do you think, not just now, but some time in the distant centuries, I can have a string of gold beads?”

“I do, indeed,” sighed Mrs. Oliver.  “You are certainly in no danger of being spoiled by luxury in your youth, my poor little Pollykins; but you will get all these things some time, I feel sure, if they are good for you, and if they belong to you.  You remember the lines I read the other day:—­

  “’Hast not thy share?  On winged feet,
  Lo! it rushes thee to meet;
  And all that Nature made thy own,
  Floating in air or pent in stone,
  Will rive the hills and swim the sea
  And, like thy shadow, follow thee.’”

“Yes,” said Polly contentedly; “I am satisfied.  My share of the world’s work is rushing to meet me.  To-night I could just say with Sarah Jewett’s Country Doctor, ‘My God, I thank thee for my future.’”

CHAPTER XII.

THE GREAT SILENCE.

The months of April and May were happy ones.  The weather was perfect, as only California weather understands the art of being; the hills were at their greenest; the wind almost forgot to blow; the fields blazed in wild-flowers; day after day rose in cloudless splendor, and day after day the Golden Gate shone like a sapphire in the sun.

Polly was inwardly nervous.  She had the “awe of prosperity” in her heart, and everything seemed too bright to last.

Both she and Edgar were very busy.  But work that one loves is no hardship, especially when one is strong and young and hopeful, and when one has great matters at stake, such as the health and wealth of an invalid mother, or the paying off of disagreeable debts.

Even the limp Mrs. Chadwick shared in the general joy; for Mr. Greenwood was so utterly discouraged with her mismanagement of the house, so determined not to fly to ills he knew not of, and so anxious to bring order out of chaos, that on the spur of the moment one day he married her.  On the next day he discharged the cook, hired a better one the third, dunned the delinquent boarder the fourth, and collected from him on the fifth; so the May check (signed Clementine Chadwick Greenwood) was made out for eighty-five dollars.