Richmond planet. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1883-1938, 1902-06-14
Spa" and Polly
Moberly
ny sUsAN HURnARp MARTIN

ne Slrts were having good time
in the sitting-room. 1t was well
warmed and lighted, and there was
a sound of laughter and the hum of
merry voices. Some one was tuning
mandolin TO the piano, and there
was huttering of music leaves.
Company had come in, as usual, TO
spend the evening. The Moberly
iris, that is, the three older ones.
all had light hair, blue eyes, and
lively, vivacious manners tina
proved very attractive TO the young
people in the quiet village.
PA" Moberly nobody knew much
about. He, sat out in the kitchen
most of the time. 1t was a dingy
little room, and often in the evening
he had no light; only the dull glow
of the stove and the red sparks of
his old-fashioned pipe.
Pa Moberly was little. timid
shrinking man. He had faded blue
eyes, bent shoulders and toil-worn
hands. lie had worked hard for his
girls. He had ungrudgingly given
them his best. 1t seemed too bad
that now he was old and they were
grown to womanhood they did not
care.
When Mrs. Moberly was alive,
things were different. He had his
comfortable easy chair then in the
sitting-room; his slippers, too, and
there was the lounge to rest on
when he was tired.
But as his girls grew up, pretty,
strong-willed and altogether selfish.
Pa Moberly found himself banished
from his comfortable quarters. A
number of cushions too fine for use
adorned the old sofa. and his arm
chair had three tides on il. He was
soon made TO understand that he
was not wanted.
y 1t was not long before he began
TO stay in the kitchen, and by and
by he sat nowhere else. He knew
every figure on the dingy papered
walls, and the only chair he had TO
sit in was n straightforward wooden
one, IN which he could not rest.
He used 20 long sometimes for his
old corner in the sittng-room, with
its lights, its laughter and its music,
but to his gentle hints the girls gave
scant encouragement. "They didn't
want pa qround;" they told them
selves. rs
he lonely, tired old man had
many thoughts as he sat In the
kitchen night after night in solitude,
and he used sometimes 20 ponder the
question in his gentle heart as to
whether, after all, it paid to bring
up girls who were ashamed of you
when you were old.
Polly did not know about the
changed condition of affairs. Polly
was the youngest, and more like her
mother than any of the others, be-
ing small, quiet and brown-eyed.
She had been staying for three
years out in Pennsylvania with an
invalid aunt for whom she had been
named. Poor Aunt Bassett was dead
now, and to-day Polly had come
home again. She was upstairs now,
busy in the small back room that the
girls had forgotten to make ready
for her.
AS Pa Moberly sat alone In the
kitchen tonight he was thinking al
Polly. In his yearEing, fatherly
heart there was faint stirring OF
hope.
There was n chance that he might
take some comfort with this, his
youngest daughter. He had felt that
from the time she was born. She
wasn't like the other girls. and she
had seemed so unfeignedly glad &c
see him. He felt the pressure of hel
young arms yet about his neck, anC
her kisses still lay warm upon his
furrowed cheek.
In the darkness of the old kitchen
he brushed tear from his eye. II,
was thinking of Ma Moberly, too
and of her gentle, tender, womanly
ways. He wished the girls were NOR,
like their mother.
Just then Polly came in. She wen
quickly to his side.
''Why, pa" she cried, "what ar,
you sitting in the kitchen for, anC
In the dark, too? Is anything tn
matter?"
In the friendly darkness Pa No
berly took the little hand an,
stroked it. Nothing, Polly" he said
81 always sit here"
OlAy SCdJCu hCTSclI on MS Knee
"Always sit here?" she cried, in sur
prise. Don't you go into the sit
ting-room evenings as you used to?
Pa Moberly shook his head. ''No,
he falter0d.
"But why?" insisted Polly. "Yo
don't mean to tell me you don't 81
in your old chair any moreT"
Pa Moberly's chin quivered. Poll
did not know, and it was hard TO tie,
her. Polly was like her mother.
"Alice likes to keep that chair fo
company" he said, slowly. "Oh,
don't mind the kitchen 80 mucl
now" he added, as cheerfully as b
could. "At least won't now, sine
you've come home. I do miss th
old chair some, but it's all right.
"The girls don't want me in Their
Polly" he went on, huskily. "They'r
young, and there's always compan,
YOU know. I don't know as I hlam