Polly of the Circus Part 5

"What's the matter?" she asked faintly, trying to find something familiar in the black face before her.

"Hush, child, hush," Mandy whispered; "jes' you lie puffickly still.

Dat's only de furs' bell a-ringin'."

"First bell?" the girl repeated, as her eyes travelled quickly about the strange walls and the unfamiliar fittings of the room. "This ain't the show!" she cried, suddenly.

"Lor' bless you, no; dis ain't no show," Mandy answered; and she laughed rea.s.suringly.

"Then where am I?" Polly asked, half breathless with bewilderment.

"Nebber you mind 'bout dat," was Mandy's unsatisfactory reply.

"But I DO mind," protested Polly, trying to raise herself to a sitting position. "Where's the bunch?"

"De wat?" asked Mandy in surprise.

"The bunch--Jim and Toby and the rest of the pus.h.!.+"

"Lor' bless you!" Mandy exclaimed. "Dey's done gone 'long wid de circus, hours ago."

"Gone! Show gone!" Polly cried in amazement. "Then what am I doing here?"

"Hole on dar, honey! hole on!" Mandy cautioned. "Don't you 'cite yo'se'f."

"Let me alone!" Polly put aside the arm that was trying to place a shawl around her. "I got to get out a-here."

"You'se got plenty o' time for dat," Mandy answered, "yes' yo' wait awhile."

"I can't wait, and I won't!" Polly shrieked, almost beside herself with anxiety. "I got to get to the next burg--Wakefield, ain't it? What time is it? Let me alone! Let me go!" she cried, struggling desperately.

The door opened softly and the young pastor stood looking down at the picture of the frail, white-faced child, and her black, determined captor.

"Here, here! What's all this about?" he asked, in a firm tone, though evidently amused.

"Who are you?" returned the girl, as she shoved herself quickly back against the pillows and drew the covers close under her chin, looking at him oddly over their top.

"She done been cuttin' up somefin' awful," Mandy explained, as she tried to regain enough breath for a new encounter.

"Cutting up? You surprise me, Miss Polly," he said, with mock seriousness.

"How do you know I'm Polly?" the little rebel asked, her eyes gleaming large and desperate above the friendly covers.

"If you will be VERY good and keep very quiet, I will try to tell you,"

he said, as he crossed to the bed.

"I won't be quiet, not for n.o.body," Polly objected, with a bold disregard of double negatives. "I got to get a move. If you ain't goin'

to help me, you needn't b.u.t.t in."

"I am afraid I can't help you to go just yet," Douglas replied. He was beginning to perceive that there were tasks before him other than the shaping of Polly's character.

"What are you trying to do to me, anyhow?" she asked, as she shot a glance of suspicion from the pastor to Mandy. "What am I up against?"

"Don't yuh be scared, honey," Mandy rea.s.sured her. "You's jes' as safe here as you done been in de circus."

"Safer, we hope," Douglas added, with a smile.

"Are you two bug?" Polly questioned, as she turned her head from one side to the other and studied them with a new idea. "Well, you can't get none the best of me. I can get away all right, and I will, too."

She made a desperate effort to put one foot to the floor, but fell back with a cry of pain.

"Dar, dar," Mandy murmured, putting the pillow under the poor, cramped neck, and smoothing the tangled hair from Polly's forehead. "Yuh done hurt yo'sef for suah dis time."

The pastor had taken a step toward the bed. His look of amus.e.m.e.nt had changed to one of pity.

"You see, Miss Polly, you have had a very bad fall, and you can't get away just yet, nor see your friends until you are better."

"It's only a scratch," Polly whimpered. "I can do my work; I got to." One more feeble effort and she succ.u.mbed, with a faint "Jimminy Crickets!"

"Uncle Toby told me that you were a very good little girl," Douglas said, as he drew up a chair and sat down by her side, confident by the expression on her face that at last he was master of the situation. "Do you think he would like you to behave like this?"

"I sure am on the blink," she sighed, as she settled back wearily upon the pillow.

"You'll be all right soon," Douglas answered, cheerily. "Mandy and I will help the time to go."

"I recollect now," Polly faltered, without hearing him. "It was the last hoop. Jim seemed to have a hunch I was goin' to be in for trouble when I went into the ring. Bingo must a felt it, too. He kept a-pullin' and a-jerkin' from the start. I got myself together to make the last jump an'--I can't remember no more." Her head drooped and her eyes closed.

"I wouldn't try just now if I were you," Douglas answered tenderly.

"It's my WHEEL, ain't it?" Polly questioned, after a pause.

"Yoah what, chile?" Mandy exclaimed, as she turned from the table, where she had been rolling up the unused bandages left from the doctor's call the night before.

"I say it's my creeper, my paddle," Polly explained, trying to locate a few of her many pains. "Gee, but that hurts!" She tried to bend her ankle. "Is it punctured?"

"Only sprained," Douglas answered, striving to control his amus.e.m.e.nt at the expression on Mandy's puzzled face. "Better not talk any more about it."

"Ain't anything the matter with my tongue, is there?" she asked, turning her head to one side and studying him quizzically.

"I don't think there is," he replied good-naturedly.

"How did I come to fall in here, anyhow?" she asked, as she studied the walls of the unfamiliar room.

"We brought you here."

"It's a swell place," she conceded grudgingly.

"We are comfortable," he admitted, as a tell-tale smile again hovered about his lips. He was thinking of the changes that he must presently make in Miss Polly's vocabulary.

"Is this the 'big top?' she asked.