"She has a little," confessed Polly, "but not dreadfully. And I do
think, Mr. Loughead, now that you have come, and that she sees how much
you want her to study and practice, she will really do better. I do,
indeed," said Polly earnestly.

Outside she could hear the "two boys," as she still called them, and
Grandpapa's voice in animated consultation over the ways and means, she
knew as well as if she were there, of spending the holidays, and it
seemed as if she could never sit in the reception room another moment
longer, but that she must fly out to them.

[Illustration: "OH!" SAID JACK LOUGHEAD. THEN HE TAPPED HIS BOOT WITH
HIS WALKING STICK.]

"Amy has no mother," said Jack Loughead after a moment, and he turned
away his head, and pretended to look out of the window.

"I know it." Polly's heart leaped guiltily. Oh! how could she think of
holidays and good times, while this poor little girl, but fifteen, had
only a dreary sense of boarding-school life to mean home to her. "And
oh! I do think," Polly hastened to say, and she clasped her hands as
Phronsie would have done, "it has made all the difference in the world
to her. And she does just lovely--so much better, I mean, than other
girls would in her place. I do really, Mr. Loughead," repeated Polly.

"And no sister," added Jack, as if to himself. "How is a fellow like
me--why, I am twenty-five, Miss Pepper, and I've been knocking about the
world ever since I was her age; my uncle took me then to Australia, into
his business--how am I ever to 'understand,' as you call it, that girl?"