Twenty-five dollars!

CHAPTER XV INASMUCH

After sundown one night Pearl’s resolve was carried into action.  She picked a shoe-box full of poppies, wrapping the stems carefully in wet newspaper.  She put the cover on, and wrapped the box neatly.

Then she wrote the address.  She wrote it painfully, laboriously, in round blocky letters.  Pearl always put her tongue out when she was doing anything that required minute attention.  She was so anxious to have the address just right that her tongue was almost around to her ear.  The address read: 

Miss Polly Bragg, english gurl and sick with fever Brandon Hospittle Brandon.

Then she drew a design around it.  Jimmy’s teacher had made them once in Jimmy’s scribbler, just beautiful.  She was sorry she could not do a bird with a long strip of tape in his mouth with “Think of Me” or “From a Friend” or “Love the Giver” on it.  Ma knew a man once who could do them, quick as wink.  He died a drunkard with delirium trimmings, but was terrible smart.

Then she stuck, under the string, a letter she had written to Camilla.  Camilla would get them sent to Polly.

“I know how to get them sent to Camilla too, you bet,” she murmured.  “There are two ways, both good ones, too.  Jim Russell is one way.  Jim knows what flowers are to folks.”

She crept softly down the stairs.  Mrs Motherwell had left the kitchen and no one was about.  The men were all down at the barn.

She turned around the cookhouse where the poppies stood straight and strong against the glowing sky.  A little single red one with white edges swayed gently on its slender stem and seemed to beckon to her with pleading insistence.  She hurried past them, fearing that she would be seen, but looking back the little poppy was still nodding and pleading.

“And so ye can go, ye sweetheart,” she whispered.  “I know what ye want.”  She came back for it.

“Just like Danny would be honin’ to come, if it was me,” she murmured with a sudden blur of homesickness.

Through the pasture she flew with the speed of a deer.  The tall sunflowers along the fence seemed to throw a light in the gathering gloom.

A night hawk circled in the air above her, and a clumsy bat came bumping through the dusk as she crossed the creek just below Jim’s shanty.

Bottles, Jim’s dog, jumped up and barked, at which Jim himself came to the door.

“Come back, Bottles,” he called to the dog.  “How will I ever get into society if you treat callers that way, and a lady, too!  Dear, dear, is my tie on straight?  Oh, is that you Pearl?  Come right in, I am glad to see you.”

Over the door of Jim’s little house the words “Happy Home” were printed in large letters and just above the one little window another sign boldly and hospitably announced “Hot Meals at all Hours.”