WESTWARD, HO!

The days passed too slowly, it seemed to the girls, eager as they were to get started westward. What had seemed only one of Polly’s balloons, as Ruth called them, had developed into a very tangible possibility. As Ted said, when one is afraid of anything, you must not run. You must turn about, and hit it hard. Ted was a splendid smasher of windmills.

All Queen’s Ferry knew that five of Miss Calvert’s girls were to spend their vacation on a ranch out in Wyoming, but it took the strawberry festival, and Polly’s birthday party to make it understand likewise that they were earning their own way out there. Steadily, the sum in Ruth’s treasury mounted higher and higher. Mrs. Yates, the Senator’s wife, who had been so kind to them the previous year, offered her help at the birthday party, and it was gladly accepted. Polly was radiant as she stood beside her, receiving guests, and likewise birthday donations, and her eyes were brimful of fun as she handed back a five dollar bill to the Senator.

“You’re not telling the truth about your age, Senator Yates,” she said, rebukingly. “It’s only a cent a year.”

“We’ll count in something on the extra Sundays and holidays,” the Senator returned. “I’m always doubly glad to have a birthday on a Sunday or a holiday, and mine comes on the Fourth of July. Isn’t it worth ten cents extra and more too, to have the same date as your country?”

“Then I ought to pay more, Polly,” whispered Crullers, as the Senator went on. “My birthday is on Easter.”

“How can it be on Easter, goose, when that’s a movable feast?” laughed Polly. “Crullers, you old stupid dear!”

“I think, Polly, I can give you a little chance to make some money on your trip,” Mrs. Yates said, later. “I am anxious to buy some Indian novelties. Marbury has his den fixed up like a tepee this year, and he wants to make things for it, not pretty beadwork, or birch-bark ornaments, but the real things an Indian boy would naturally have in his tent. If you want to buy them on commission, that would help too. You must think of every possible way.”

“Indeed, we’re very glad to,” said Polly, heartily.

And they were too. After the first struggle was over, there was a literal charm in seeing the little treasury fund grow day by day, and in adding to it. It was astonishing how many urgent duties the Admiral discovered which needed to be performed.

“Upon my word, Polly, my books show up badly in this sunlight,” he would say. “I don’t like to trust Mandy in here, or Welcome. Now if you had the time, and felt like it, it would be worth a dollar to me to have those books all dusted, and straightened—a whole dollar.”

The books were dusted, and Polly pocketed the dollar proudly. This gave the rest a hint, and one day Miss Calvert found herself approached by four determined young persons, after class. They offered to clean the library thoroughly, they assured her they would take out all the books, dust them, wash the glass doors, straighten everything up right, send the rug down to old Jim, the gardener, to be beaten, and make the whole room look like new.

“Bless my heart, girls,” exclaimed Miss Calvert, laughing in spite of her dignity. “How did you ever guess that the cleaning of the library is my one bÊte noire of the springtime? I will give you each a dollar if you can do it right.”

It was accomplished, and the four dollars added to the “main pile,” as Ruth called the growing hoard.

Miss Murray heard from the railroads, and it was a more encouraging outlook than she had hoped for. After the end of May, the summer rates went into force, she found, to encourage a western exodus of “teachers, poets, homeseekers, invalids, and all of summer’s sweethearts,” as Polly said later. The round trip tickets from Washington out to Deercroft, Wyoming, would be $67.50 apiece.

“And mother writes that she will board you at four dollars a head weekly, and at that figure you must do your own laundry, and take care of your own shack. How’s that, girls?”

“It seems too little,” Ruth answered, with her quick judgment on things material.

“But it is not, Ruth. Board at five dollars can be had up where we are and this is only one less. That will be twenty a week for all five.”

“We plan to stay a month,” Polly interrupted. “Do you think we can manage it, Miss Murray?”

“How much is there in the treasury so far, Ruth?”

Ruth figured hastily.

“About two hundred and forty-six dollars, I think. Polly handed in thirty-seven dollars from the birthday fÊte, and the auction brought thirty-two, and Isabel made eighteen out of her strawberry festival, besides what we had, and my money that isn’t all earned yet, you know.”

“It shows what you can do if you try,” Ted remarked, loftily.

“Yes, and that doesn’t include Isabel’s commission on summer clothes from parents,” Polly added. “I think we can make it all up in time. And if we are truly vacation seekers, we won’t bother over luxuries. I think we could even fix up lunches of canned goods that would carry us over the trip.”

“What about berths, Miss Murray?” asked Isabel, somewhat plaintively. “Don’t they cost a good deal?”

“Yes, they certainly do. Five dollars, I think, it is, out to Chicago, and we have one night on the road after that.”

“I shall not go to bed at all,” declared Ted. “I never like to sleep on the train anyhow. I like to watch for lights in the dark out of the car window.”

But Ruth, who had forgotten about the berth problem, glanced up at Miss Murray in despair.

“It might be economy in the long run, girls, to take a stateroom—”

“We couldn’t possibly afford such luxuries, Miss Murray,” Polly said, flatly. “Those things are for the nobility, not for hard-working vacation seekers like us. We will take the ‘homeseekers special’ out from Chicago, probably.”

“What’s that, Polly?” asked Sue, suspiciously.

“It’s a train for people who are in real earnest, and want to go some place, and don’t care how they go as long as they get there,” pronounced Polly, gravely.

“I’m in that class,” Ted put in, blithely. “Let’s all be jolly good travelers, girls, and start in ‘roughing it’ from this end. Why, we’d have a good time even if we went on a plank through the air.”

“I don’t quite approve of that picture, Ted,” laughed Miss Murray. “I think we’ll go by the regular route. How does it seem to you, girls, to be counting the pennies and dollars?”

“Good discipline,” Polly said, nodding her head emphatically.

It surely was. Even the Admiral, who had rather regarded the western trip as one of Polly’s air castles, was forced to admit that she was a good general. By the time school closed in June, there was $336.00 in the treasury, and the girls had earned it all, practically, themselves. What they had not earned, they had acquired through self-denial, giving up pretty summer gowns, and hats, and “accessories,” as Isabel said, rather mournfully—“specially those ‘accessories.’”

“But Polly, you’re giving us only these rough, straw outing sailors, and the little caps,” Sue protested. “What shall we wear to church?”

Jean smiled at them over the top of her book. They were in the garden at the Hall during noontime.

“The nearest church to us is thirty-five miles,” she told them. “If we are very fortunate, we may have service once in a while from the missionary bishop, or some of his priests, but usually father reads it Sunday mornings for us all, and we like to hold it out of doors. You won’t miss your hats, girls.”

“How you must love your father, Miss Murray,” Polly said later, when they were alone. “I always hear you speak of him as though you—oh, I don’t know,—as though you believed he always did the right thing. He must be very nice.”

“He is splendid,” said Jean, simply. “At least we think so. And so is mother. But you girls will love Captain Sandy, Miss Diantha’s husband.”

“Why?” asked Polly.

“Wait until you visit the Alameda ranch, and then you’ll know why. Nobody can explain it.”

Miss Calvert knew where they were going, and Polly wondered and wondered why she never spoke of it, never talked about her sister, or sent messages out to her. But she did not ask questions, much as she longed to.

Finally, after eight strenuous and industrious weeks, school closed, and they could turn with free hearts to the journey. Each girl had followed Miss Murray’s advice, and bought a pair of stout, high boots for rugged walking and climbing, and a short khaki skirt, buttoning on the side, with pockets, and bloomers of the same material.

“These are what all the girl-scouts wear, with shirtwaists, and belts,” Jean told them. “And from now on that is what you must be, girl-scouts and ranchers.”

Each girl took a suit-case, and Polly was rigid in her inspection rules on the contents. Unnecessary articles were strictly tabooed. Underwear, kimonos, one best dress apiece, toilet articles, a few favorite books, and that was about all she permitted them.

“Land, I should suttinly say you chilluns were going to rough it,” said Aunty Welcome, indignantly, as she looked over Polly’s outfit. “What you-all gwine to do if a big snake gets you by yo’ hind heel?”

“Dance, Aunty,” Polly answered, merrily. “I’m sure we’d dance. Maybe that’s how the Snake Dance first started. Don’t you wish you were going along with us?”

“Mis’ Polly chile, I declar’, I wouldn’t go wanderin’ an’ a-mousin’ ’round de face ob de earth like dat, not for de world. But it makes mah ole heart ache when I think how mah lamb’s going away for de first time in her natural life from her ole mammy.”

“Don’t you cry, dear,” Polly begged, putting her arms around Aunty’s neck in a vigorous hug of sympathy. “I’ll be so careful, and I’ll remember everything—not to climb trees, not to hunt bears, not to get too friendly with Indians, not to—”

“Go ’long, you’s jest laughing now. Ah ain’t got a mite ob confidency in yo’. Go ’long, chile.”

The night before they left Queen’s Ferry, Polly was feeling subdued, as in fact she always did, after the fight was won on anything she started. It was a beautifully clear June night. She stepped out on the broad veranda, and hesitated. The high, white pillars seemed so tall and strange in the bright moonlight, and the shadows seemed almost like living things, so black and clearly outlined they lay all about. Out in the garden, humming birds darted about the dewy flowers. She could catch the delicate whirr of their wings. Tan, the Admiral’s big tawny-haired setter, lay stretched out before the door, asleep. She had to step over him on her way out to the Admiral’s chair.

“The world just seems all moonshine and roses to-night, grandfather dear,” she said, sitting down on the cushioned seat that swung from two heavy chains. “Aren’t they sweet?”

“Mighty sweet,” agreed the Admiral. “When you are in Wyoming, will you think of your poor, lonely old grandfather sitting here by himself?”

“In peace and quiet, with nobody to bother him?” Polly finished up. “Yes, sir, I will. And I’ll miss you so much.”

The Admiral leaned forward, his hand on her brown braids.

“Fifteen in November, isn’t that right? Your aunts seem to think Glenwood’s no place for you, Polly, with an old codger like myself. Betty wrote in to-day, and declared if I did not let you live under her wing, or one of the other aunts’, I must get a governess for you. What do you think of that?”

Polly regarded him thoughtfully.

“They don’t understand how happy we are, do they, dear?” she said softly. “We never bother each other, do we? And I mind every word you say—”

“Yes, you do,” interposed the Admiral, gruffly. “You’d persuade a Nantucket skipper that he was off his course.”

“But wouldn’t you miss me terribly if I ever had to leave Glenwood?” Polly rested her head against his knee, her lips pressed to the dear old hand that had never shown her anything save kindness and sympathy in all her life.

“Miss you? I wouldn’t stay here without you, child,” protested the Admiral. “Do you think that Glenwood is preserved for a worn out, retired old salt like myself? It is only a garden spot for the rearing of my rose, Polly; remember that. Now, to bed with you, or Welcome will scold me for keeping you out too late. If you should get into any trouble, or need a relief expedition, remember it is always here ready to start West.”

Polly rose, and hesitated a minute, as Aunty Welcome called her indoors. Then she said softly:

“I sometimes think that I am the luckiest girl in the world.”

“Why?” asked the old Admiral, his eyes twinkling with merriment. “Because you are Polly Page?”

“No, not that, dear,” replied Polly, seriously. “Because I am Polly Page’s grandfather’s granddaughter.”

And before the Admiral could reply to that parting shot, she had run up to bed, laughing.