Polly and Graham — Villette

Mr. Home stays two days by the Bretton fire and will not go out. Polly sits on his knee until she fears she tires him, then slides to the rug and stitches a scarlet-speckled handkerchief, a keepsake she must finish before he leaves, at about a score of stitches in half an hour. In the evenings Graham tries to win her with the contents of his desk. An etching of a child and a Blenheim spaniel falls. She wants it and will not take a gift that costs her dignity. He threatens to cut the dog's head into taper-lighters. She comes, snatches the picture, and flees to her father's waistcoat. Her open hand becomes a fist. Graham covers his eye and groans for a doctor until she weeps that she meant only his mouth. He snatches her up again, and she calls him the naughtiest, rudest, worst person that ever was.

On the morning he leaves, he tells her she is too little to travel and must not cry at parting. She holds up quivering lips and does not sob. When the street door closes she drops to her knees with a low cry of "Papa!" Nobody speaks. Lucy stays calm. For two days Polly takes comfort from no one. On the third evening Graham lifts her without a word. She sleeps against him and is carried upstairs. Next morning she asks for Mr. Graham, carries his tea, and chooses the best of the breakfast, including marmalade she will not taste herself. She learns his schoolfellows by heart, mimics an under-master until Mrs. Bretton forbids it, and at tea whispers for sweet cake so she can stand at his knee. The cake is not the prize. His notice is.

That league breaks on his birthday. His friends dine behind the dining-room door, and Polly sits on the lowest stair wishing the door were glass. Lucy says she may knock. Graham calls her a little monkey and shuts her out. She lies face down on the mat. That night she will not look at him. After they are friends again she never seeks him or asks for his notice. She refuses a careless offer of a canter and calls Lucy a tatter-box for repeating the wish. On quiet Sundays she kneels by the couch, says a hymn, and reads of Joseph in the pit, gathering Graham's head to her as if she were Jacob and he the son who might be lost.

Then a letter arrives. Mr. Home is settled on the Continent and wants her at once. Lucy finds her rocking the doll Candace and planning, in twenty years, to climb Mount Blanck with Graham. At the mention of papa she says she had just begun to be happy. Told she must go, she asks Lucy to tell Graham. He is deep in a school prize, calls her little Mousie, and pushes her with his foot without knowing she is on the carpet, caressing it. At night she sits awake and says she cannot live. Lucy carries her back. Graham kisses her and says she cares for him more than for papa now. She whispers that she cares, and that he cares nothing for her. Lucy tells her she is his favourite, and that if she expects too much it will be all over. Polly promises to be good, then says there is no future, because she is going. Lucy warms her until she sleeps. The next day she leaves, trembling like a leaf, and still in command of herself.