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[Illustration: SHE SAT OBEDIENTLY STILL]




                               SWEET P’S

                                  By
                           JULIE M. LIPPMANN

            Author of “Miss Wildfire,” “Dorothy Day,” etc.

                       ILLUSTRATED BY IDA WAUGH

                             PHILADELPHIA
                      THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
                                 MCMII

             COPYRIGHT 1902 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY

                       Published August 5, 1902




                         _TO MY LITTLE FRIEND
                            NATALIE WILSON_




Contents


    CHAP.                               PAGE

       I MISS CISSY’S PLAN                 7

      II “CASH ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIVE”      21

     III “THE BEST OF ALL THE GAME”       36

      IV “SWEET P’S”                      51

       V POLLY’S PLUCK                    66

      VI SISTER’S PARTY                   79

     VII IN THE COUNTRY                   94

    VIII PRISCILLA’S VICTORY             114

      IX WHAT HAPPENED TO PRISCILLA      129

       X THE TELEGRAM                    146

      XI WHAT HAPPENED TO POLLY          161

     XII HOME AGAIN                      176




_Sweet P’s_




CHAPTER I

MISS CISSY’S PLAN


“There now! You’re done!” exclaimed Hannah, the nurse, giving Priscilla
an approving pat and looking her over carefully from head to heels to
see that nothing was amiss. “Now you’ll please to sit in this chair,
like a little lady, and not stir, else you’ll rumple your pretty frock
and then your mamma will be displeased, for she will want you to look
just right before all the company down-stairs. Your grandpapa and
grandmamma, and uncles and aunts, and Cousin Cicely--all the line folks
who have come to take dinner with you and bring you lovely birthday
presents. So up you go!”

Priscilla suffered herself to be lifted into the big armchair without
a word and then sat obediently still, watching Hannah, as she bustled
about the nursery “tidying up” as she called it.

Priscilla was a very quiet little girl, with great, solemn brown eyes,
a small, sober mouth and a quantity of soft, bright hair that had to be
brushed so often it made her eyes water just to think of it.

This was her eighth birthday. Now, when strangers asked her, as they
always did, “how old she was” she could reply “Going on nine,” but she
would still be compelled to give the same old answer to their next
familiar question of, “And have you any brothers and sisters?” for
Priscilla was an only child.

She sometimes wondered what they meant when they shook their heads
and murmured, “Such a pity! Poor little thing!” for when Theresa, the
parlor-maid, whom, by the way, Priscilla did not like very much, came
up to the nursery and saw all her wonderful toys and the new frocks and
hats and coats that were continually being sent home to her, she always
said sharply and with a curl of the lip: “My! But isn’t she a lucky
child! It must be grand to be such a rich little thing!” For how can
one be “a pity” and “lucky” at the same time? and “a poor little thing”
and a “rich little thing” at once?

Priscilla did not like to enquire of her mamma or Hannah about it, for
she had once been very sick with a pain in her head, and the doctors
had come, and she was in bed for a long time, and after that she had
been told not to ask questions. And whenever she sat, as she loved
to do, very quietly on the nursery couch, trying to puzzle things out
for herself, Hannah would come and bid her “stop her studyin’” and go
and play with her dolls, explaining that “little girls never would
grow big and strong and beautiful like their Cousin Cicely if they
sat still all the time and bothered their brains about things they
couldn’t understand.” So it was not as hard for Priscilla as it might
have been for some other little girls to “sit still like a lady” in
the big armchair, and she was just beginning to have “a nice time with
her mind” when there was a knock upon the door and James the butler,
announced in his grand, deep voice, “Dinner is served. And your mamma
says as ’ow she wishes you to come down, miss.”

She waited for Hannah to lift her to the floor, bade her good-bye very
politely and then tripped daintily down the long halls and softly
carpeted staircases to the dining-room, where there was a great stir
and murmur of voices and what seemed to Priscilla a vast crowd of
people. She knew them all well, of course; grandpapa and grandmamma;
Uncle Arthur Hamilton, who was the husband of Aunt Laura; Uncle Robert
and Aunt Louise Duer; dear Cousin Cissy, and her papa and mamma. They
were all very old and familiar friends, but when they were collected
together they seemed strange and “different” and frightened her very
much. Her heart always beat exceedingly fast as she moved about from
one to the other saying, “Yes, aunt” and “No, uncle,” so many times in
succession. When she entered the room now the hum of voices suddenly
stopped and then, the next instant, broke out afresh and louder than
ever.

“Dear child! Why, I do believe she’s grown!”

“Bless her heart, so she has!”

“But she doesn’t grow stout.”

“Nor rosy.”

“Come, my pet, and kiss grandpapa!”

“What a big girl grandmamma has got! Eight years old! Just fancy!”

“Do let me have her for a moment. I must have a kiss this second.”

Priscilla heaved a deep sigh under the lace of her frock at which, to
her embarrassment, all the company laughed and dear Cousin Cicely said:

“She’s bored to death with all our attention and I don’t wonder. It is
a nuisance to have to kiss so many people. There, Priscilla darling,
you shall sit right here, next to Cousin Cissy, and no one shall bother
you any more.”

Dinner down here in the big dining-room was always a very slow
and tiresome affair in Priscilla’s estimation. She liked her own
nursery-dinner best, which she ate in the middle of the day, with
Hannah sitting by to see that the baked potatoes were well done
and the beef rare enough. This “down-stairs-dinner” to-night was no
less long and wearisome than usual, but at last it was done and then
Priscilla was carried in state to the drawing-room upon the shoulder
of tall Uncle Arthur Hamilton, and at the head of a long procession of
laughing and chattering relations who, she knew, would stand around
in a great, embarrassing circle and watch her as she examined the
beautiful birthday gifts they had brought her.

And behold! There was a large table in the middle of the room, and
it was covered with a white cloth and piled high with wonderful
things. Dolls that walked and dolls that talked; books and games and
music-boxes. A doll’s kitchen and a doll’s carriage; a little piano
with “really-truly” white and black ivory keys, and all sorts and sizes
of fine silk, and velvet boxes containing gold chains and rings and
pins, with pretty glittering stones.

Uncle Arthur lifted Priscilla from his shoulder and set her down
upon the floor before the table, where she stood in silence, looking
wistfully at her new treasures, but not quite knowing what to do about
them.

“See this splendid dolly, Priscilla! She can say ever so many French
words. Don’t you want to hear her?”

“Listen to this lovely music-box, Priscilla! What pretty tunes it can
play!”

“Don’t you want me to hang this beautiful chain around your neck,
Priscilla? It will look so pretty on your white dress.”

Priscilla gazed from one thing to another, as they were thrust before
her and tried to be polite, as Hannah had told her to be, but she
felt dizzy and bewildered and could only stand still, clasping and
unclasping her hands in front of her.

“Why, I don’t believe she cares for them at all,” said Aunt Louise in a
surprised and disappointed tone.

“Embarrassment of riches, perhaps,” suggested Uncle Robert, her husband.

“Here, Priscilla, dear,” broke in Aunt Laura. “See this wonderful new
dolly that can walk! Now, you must certainly play with her. Why, when
I was a little girl I would have been delighted if my uncles and aunts
had given me such splendid things! I would not have stood, as you are
doing, and looked as if I did not care for them.”

Priscilla obediently took the accomplished dolly from her Aunt Laura’s
hands and held it loosely in her arms, but she did not make any attempt
to “play with her prettily.” Aunt Laura frowned.

Grandmamma came forward and passed her arm about Priscilla’s waist.
“Our dear little girl ought to be very happy with so many people to
love her,” she said, softly. Somehow her tone, kind as it was, made
Priscilla feel she was being naughty because she was not so happy as
grandmamma thought she ought to be. She would have liked to be obedient
and to please her relations, but if she was not doing so by being
very proper, and saying, “Yes, aunt,” and “No, uncle,” in answer to
their questions, she did not know what else they wanted. It puzzled
and bewildered her, and then the first thing she knew, the dolly had
fallen from her arms to the floor with a crash, where it lay foolishly
kicking its legs and sawing the air with its arms, while she herself
was sobbing big tears over her nice clean dress in a way that she knew
would most dreadfully provoke Hannah.

In a twinkling she was in her mother’s arms, and there was a great stir
and murmur of voices about her. No one could understand what was the
matter.

“She must be sick,” observed Aunt Laura.

“Perhaps something about the doll hurt her--a pin in its clothes
maybe,” suggested Aunt Louise.

“Doesn’t she like toys?” asked Uncle Robert.

“We grown-ups frighten her, poor youngster. There are a good many of
us, you know, and you are not all as handsome as I am,” laughed Uncle
Arthur, mischievously, “are they, Priscilla?”

“Well, she certainly is an odd child not to be perfectly delighted with
so many nice things. When I was a little girl----” reiterated Aunt
Laura.

But just then Hannah appeared at the door and Priscilla’s mother
murmured in her ear, “Say ‘Good-night all,’ my darling, ‘and thank you
for giving me such a happy birthday.’”

“Good-night all, and thank you for giving me such a happy birthday,”
whispered Priscilla with a sobbing catch in her voice.

“Don’t mention it,” responded Uncle Arthur, bowing low.

And then Hannah led her off to bed.

But that was by no means the end of her birthday, although she thought
it was. Long after she was safely asleep in her little brass bed the
grown-up people down-stairs were still talking about her. It seemed
so remarkable to them that she had not shown more interest in the
beautiful things they had prepared for her.

“Priscilla was never a very demonstrative child,” said her mother a
little sadly, as if she were excusing her.

“But her heart is in the right place, nevertheless,” her father
declared.

“Oh, it isn’t that,” broke in Aunt Laura. “She is a dear little girl,
of course, but--all I mean is, she doesn’t act as a child ought to
act; as a healthy child ought to act. She ought to be full of spirits,
jumping about and laughing and playing. Now when I was a little
girl----”

“I don’t think you quite understand Priscilla, dear Aunt Laura,” a
bright young voice interrupted quickly. “She is naturally a quiet,
timid little thing. She would never be boisterous, but you are right
in this, that she doesn’t act as a child of her age might be expected
to act, and the reason is, she is lonely. She has never known other
children. She has never learned to play. Now these presents here are
all very fine in their way, but they do not really interest her,
because she does not know how to use them.”

“But dear me,” observed Aunt Laura, “why doesn’t somebody teach her? I
wound up the walking-doll for her myself----”

Miss Cicely smiled. “I do not mean that,” she replied. “You couldn’t
teach her and I couldn’t, because--we’ve forgotten how. The only one
who could teach her would be a little girl of about her own age; a
playmate. Believe me, the best present we could give Priscilla would be
a companion; a flesh-and-blood little girl who could share her pretty
things, and who would teach her how to enjoy them.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Aunt Laura. “What