Excerpt from Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl

At the other side of the brook was a hedge, composed principally of wild roses and hawthorn bushes, and beyond the hedge was a wide dyke, and at the top of the dyke a wire paling, and beyond that again, a good sized vegetable garden.

From the tops of the trees, had any one been energetic enough to climb up there, or had any bird been sufficiently endowed with curiosity to glance his bright eyes in that direction, might have been seen smoke, ascending straight up into the air, and proceeding from the kitchen chimneys of a square built, gray house.

The house was nearly covered with creepers, and had a trellis porch, sheltering and protecting its open hall-door. Pigeons were cooing near, and several dogs were lying flat out, in the shade which the wide eaves of the house afforded. There was a flower-garden in front, and a wide gravel sweep, and a tennis-court and croquet lawn, and a rose arbor, and even a great, wide, cool-looking tent. But as far as human life was concerned the whole place looked absolutely deserted. The pigeons cooed languidly, and the dogs yapped and yawned, and made ferocious snaps at audacious and troublesome flies. But no one handled the tennis bats, nor took up the croquet mallets; no one stopped to admire the roses, and no one entered the cool, inviting tent. The whole place might have been dead, as far as human life was concerned and although the smoke did ascend straight up from the kitchen chimney, a. Vagrant or a tramp might have been tempted to enter the house by the open hall-door, were it not protected by the lazy dogs.

Up, however, by the hedge, at the other side of the kitchen-garden, could be heard just then the crackle of a bough, the rustle of a dress, and a short, smothered, impatient exclamation. And had any one peered very close they would have seen lying flat in the long grasses a tall, slender, half-grown girl, with dark eyes and rosy cheeks, and tangled curly rebellious locks. She had one arm raised, and was drawing herself deliberately an inch at a time along the smooth grass. Several birds had taken refuge in this fragrant hedge of hawthorn and wild roses. They were talking to one another, keeping up a perpetual chatter but whenever the girl stirred a twig, or disturbed a branch, they stopped, looking around them in alarm, but none of them as yet seeing the prone, slim figure, which was, indeed almost covered by the grasses. Perfect stillness once more - the birds resumed their conversation, and the girl made another slight movement forward. This time she disturbed no twig, and interrupted none of the bird-gossip. She was near, very near a tempting green bough, and on the bough sat two full-grown lovely thrushes they were not singing, but were holding a very gentle and affectionate con versation, sitting close together, and looking at one another out of their bright eyes, and now and then kissing each other with that loving little peck which means a great deal in bird-life.

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