Excerpt
CHAPTER I THE ROSEWOOD BOX
The telephone bell cut sharp into Polly’s story.
She was recounting one of the merry hours that Mrs. Jocelyn had given to her and Leonora, while Dr. Dudley and his wife were taking their wedding journey. Still dimpling with laughter, she ran across to the instrument; but as she turned back from the message her face was troubled.
“Father says I am to come right over to the hospital,” she told her mother. “Mr. Bean—you know, the one that married Aunt Jane—has got hurt, and he wants to see me. I hope he isn’t going to die. He was real good to me that time I was there, as good as he dared to be.”
“I will go with you,” Mrs. Dudley decided.
And, locking the house, they went out into the early evening darkness.
The physician was awaiting them in his office.
“Is he badly hurt?” asked Polly anxiously. “What does he want to see me for?”
“We are afraid of internal injury,” was the grave answer. “He was on his way to you when the car struck him.”
“To me?” Polly exclaimed.
“He was fetching a little box that belonged to your mother. Do you recollect it—a small rosewood box?”
“Oh, yes!” she cried. “I’d forgotten all about it—there’s a wreath of tiny pearl flowers on the cover!”
The Doctor nodded.
“Mr. Bean seems to attach great value to the box or its contents.”
“Oh, what is in it?”
“I don’t know. But he kept tight hold of it even after he was knocked down, and it was the first thing he called for when he regained consciousness. I thought he had better defer seeing you until to-morrow morning; but he wouldn’t hear to it. So I let him have his own way.”
“Have you sent word to Aunt Jane?” inquired Polly, instinctively shrinking from contact with the woman in whose power she had lived through those dreadful years.
Dr. Dudley gave a smiling negative. “He begged me not to let her know.”
“I don’t blame him!” Polly burst out. “I guess he’s glad to get away from her, if he did have to be hurt to do it.”
“Probably he wishes first to make sure that the box is in your hands,” observed the Doctor, rising. “She will have to be notified. Come, we will go upstairs. The sooner the matter is off Mr. Bean’s mind, the better.”
Polly was dismayed at sight of the little man’s face. In their whiteness his pinched features seemed more wizen than ever. But his smile of welcome was eager.
“How do you do, my dear? My dear!” the wiry hand was extended with evident pain.
Polly squeezed it sympathetically, and told him how sorry she was for his accident.
Mr. Bean gazed at her with tender, wistful eyes.
“My little girl was ’most as big as you,” he mused. “Not quite; she wasn’t but six when she—went. But you look consider’ble like her—wish’t I had a picture o’ Susie! I wish’t I had!” He drew his breath hard.
Polly patted the wrinkled hand, not knowing what to say.
“But I’ve got a picture here you’ll like,” the little man brightened. “Yer’ll like it first-rate.”
His hand moved gropingly underneath the bed covers, and finally brought out the little box that Polly instantly recognized.
“Oh, thank you! How pretty it is!” She received it with a radiant smile.
Mr. Bean’s face grew suddenly troubled.
“Yer mustn’t blame Jane too much,” he began pleadingly. “I guess she kind o’ dassent give it to yer, so long afterwards. It’s locked,”—as Polly pulled at the cover,—“and there ain’t no key,” he mourned. “I do’ know what Jane’s done with it. Yer’ll have to git another,—there wa’n’t no other way.” His voice was plaintive.
“That’s all right,” Polly reassured him....