“Roxy, you know that from the end window in your chamber you can look straight across the fields and see the end windows of our attic,” she began. But Roxy shook her head.
“I can see the top of your house, but I don’t remember about windows,” she said thoughtfully.
“I’m sure you can,” Polly insisted, “because I looked out from our attic and I could see your window just as plain as could be; and the muslin curtain blew out, back and forth, while I was looking, just as if somebody was waving it,” and Polly smiled and nodded as if expecting Roxy to discover some particular meaning in the waving curtain, but Roxy’s gray eyes were fixed questioningly on her companion and she made no response.
“Oh, Roxy! What a little owl you are!” said Polly laughingly. “Don’t you understand what the waving curtain means? Signals!” and at the last word, Polly’s voice dropped to a whisper. But Roxy had sprung up, a little angry flush showing on her brown cheeks.
“I am not an ‘owl,’ Polly Lawrence,” but before Polly could say a word Roxy had clasped the older girl’s arm, and was saying: “Oh, Polly, I’ll be an owl if you want me to. I don’t know why I get mad so quickly!”
Polly put her arm about the little girl and said smilingly: “An owl is the wisest bird of all the birds, even if he can’t see in the daytime!”
“Can’t an owl see in daytime?” questioned Roxy. “Why can’t he?”
But at this question Polly shook her head.
“You’ll have to ask Grandma Miller; she knows all about birds,” she answered. “What I meant, Roxy-poxy, was that you did not see what I was driving at about windows and curtains; if I can see your window-curtain from my attic windows, why can’t we have signals? If, for instance, I promise to come over here and can’t come I could fasten a white towel in my attic window; you would see it from your window and then you wouldn’t expect me.”
Roxy’s face brightened with delight. “Oh, Polly! you think of the nicest things! Why, we can have a lot of signals, can’t we?”
“Of course we can,” Polly agreed; “we can have signals that mean ‘come over this afternoon’ and a signal that means a ride or a walk.”
Roxy was now all eagerness to carry out Polly’s plan; and before Polly started for home the two girls had written out a set of “signals,” to be carried out by white cloths fluttering from the upper windows of the Miller and Lawrence houses. Beside this Polly had suggested that on the following day they should go for a walk up the pasture slope beyond the Lawrence house.