Part 5 (2/2)

But it happened that on this day the Pretends had gone for a motor-ride.

And as it was hot, Miss Gray said that she would be glad to wait a few minutes in the drawing-room. Because, you see, Mrs. Pretend was expected in every minute. The maid knew her business, of course; there was no ”pretend” about her. She brought a cup of tea, and left Miss Gray to do--what do you think?--look over the books on the table.

At first Miss Gray thought that something had suddenly gone wrong with her eyes. She opened a fine Macaulay, and saw ”First Prize for History, Presented to Miss P. Pretend.” Next came ”Special Prize for Good Conduct--Miss P. Pretend.”

There was a whole table covered with them, laid out in the center of the room, and more stuck in decorative oaken shelves, of fine old oak, made by the village handy-man.

Then Miss Gray understood, and her feelings were too much for her. But even then she did not give Polly away. You see, Miss Gray was a pretty good sort--that is, a good sort, and a pretty one too--which is the best sort of all, Hugh John says.

So she just rang the bell, and told the maid that she could not wait any longer to see Mrs. Pretend, but that she would write.

And she did. It was a little letter just saying that circ.u.mstances over which she had no control, etc., had caused such a pressure upon Olympia College that she was sorry there would not be a vacancy for Polly that year.

Well, you can fancy--Polly's mother and father were very angry. So much so that they determined to start off at once to call on the heads of the college and complain.

But Polly herself, as soon as she had heard from Ellen, the housemaid, what had happened, and how Miss Gray had been twenty minutes in the drawing-room, and gone away leaving her tea hardly ”sipped,” knew at once what was the matter.

So she dissuaded her father and mother from going to Olympia College.

She was not appreciated, she said. She had always known it. Even Miss Gray was jealous of her. And her mother said to her father, ”I do not wonder at it, dear. It is all the effect of our too careful bringing up of Polly. Truly we may say with the Psalmist--

”'Than all her teachers now she has More understanding far!'”

And in a way, do you know, she had. And it was the training that did it.

But later on, Dear Diary, I shall write more about Polly Pretend, when she got a governess. For then she pretended and the governess pretended, and instead of getting out of the habit, as Hugh John says, seven Pretending Devils worse than the first entered into her.

But of that another time.

V

PRINCIPIA

_June continued, but nearer the end, and hotter._

Polly Pretend's governess, after she could not be received at Olympia, was Miss Principia Crow. She had more than three miles of testimonials, if all had been written out in a line in text hand and measured.

The only curious thing was that the dates of all these were old, and Miss Principia was still fairly young. Also, she admitted having changed her name ”for family reasons.”

But she seemed just the sort of person for Polly Pretend. She did not know much arithmetic--just enough to cheat at tennis. She had certificates that reached as far as ”trig”--the wonderful science which makes the boys stamp and throw their books about the room when they have to study it.

Now Pa and Ma Pretend had taken a great deal of trouble in providing a suitable companion for Polly, and in a way they had managed all right.

Miss Crow pretended to teach, and Polly pretended to learn, and one knew as much about the matter as the other.

Miss Crow pa.s.sed the time in telling Polly how many people had been in love with her, and the hopes she had of as many more. Polly begged the loan of a pier-gla.s.s from her mother, and thought, as she pretended before it, smiling at herself and sweeping imaginary trains, how soon her turn would come to have scores of lovers all willing and anxious to drown themselves for her sake, like Miss Principia Crow.

Fragments of conversation were sometimes caught by Mamma Pretend, and she thought to herself, ”What strange authors they do set young people to study now-a-days! When I was a girl we had _Magnall's Questions_ and _Little Arthur's History of England_!”

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