My father laughed loudly, but Mrs.Bundle was seriously displeased.
"Master Reginald would never have thought of no such thing on a Sunday afternoon but for you, Miss Polly," she said, with a partiality for her "own boy" which offended my sense of justice.
"I climbed a tree too, Nurse," I said, emphatically.
"And it was only a Sunday kind of climbing," Polly pleaded.

But Nurse Bundle refused to see the force of Polly's idea; we were ignominiously dismissed to the nursery, and thenceforward were obliged, as before, to confine our tree-climbing exploits to the six working days of the week.
And these Portugal laurels bore the names of the Pulpit and the Pew ever afterwards.
* * * * * I showed my flat iron to Polly, and she was so much pleased with it that I greatly regretted that I had only brought away this one from Oakford.

I should have given it to her, but for its connection with the little white-beavered lady.
We both played with it; and at a suggestion of Polly's, we gave quite a new character to our "wash" (or rather "ironing," for we omitted the earlier processes of the laundry).

We used to cut small models of clothes out of white paper, and then iron them with the farthing iron.
How nobly that domestic implement did its duty till the luckless day when Polly became uneasy because we did not "put it down to the fire to get hot!" "Nurse doesn't like us to play with fire," I conscientiously reminded her.
"It's not playing with fire; it's only putting the iron on the hob," said Polly.
And to this unworthy evasion I yielded, and--my arm being longer than Polly's--put the flat iron on the top bar of the nursery grate with my own hand.

Whilst the iron was heating we went back to our scissors and paper.
"You cut out a few more white petticoats, Regie dear," said Polly, "and I will make an iron-holder;" with which she calmly cut several inches off the end of her sash, and began to fold it for the purpose.
Aunt Maria's nursery discipline was firm, but her own nature was independent, almost to aggressiveness; and Polly inherited enough of the latter to more than counteract the repression of the former.