Polly | Page 4

and took illness and death away with him.
"Father won't let Josie Wilson die," Polly used to say; or, "What bad toothache Peter Simpkins has to-day--but when father sees him he will be all right."
Polly had a great reverence for her father, although she loved her beautiful young mother best. The children never expected Dr. Maybright to join in their games, or to be sympathetic over their joys or their woes. They reverenced him much, they loved him well, but he was too busy and too great to be troubled by their little concerns. Of course, mother was different, for mother was part and parcel of their lives.
There were six tall, slim, rather straggling-looking Maybright girls--all overgrown, and long of limb, and short of frock. Then there came two podgy boys, greater pickles than the girls, more hopelessly disreputable, more defiant of all authority, except mother's. Polly was as bad as her brothers in this respect, but the other five girls were docility itself compared to these black lambs, whose proper names were Charley and John, but who never had been called anything, and never would be called anything in that select circle, but Bunny and Bob.
This was the family; the more refined neighbors rather dreaded them, and even the villagers spoke of most of them as "wondrous rampageous!" But Mrs. Maybright always smiled when unfriendly comments reached her ears.
"Wait and see," she would say; "just quietly wait and see--they are all, every one of them, the sweetest and most healthy-minded children in the world. Let them alone, and don't interfere with them. I should not like perfection, it would have nothing to grow to."
Mrs. Maybright taught the girls herself, and the boys had a rather frightened-looking nursery-governess, who often was seen to rush from the school-room dissolved in tears; but was generally overtaken half-way up the avenue by two small figures, nearly throttled by two pairs of repentant little arms, while eager lips vowed, declared, and vociferated, that they would never, never be naughty again--that they would never tease their own sweet, sweetest of Miss Wilsons any more.
Nor did they--until the next time.
Polly was fourteen on that hot July afternoon when she lay on the grass and skillfully captured the living thrushes, and held them to her smooth, glowing young cheeks. Her birthday had been over for a whole fortnight; it had been a day full of delight, love, and happiness, and mother had said a word or two to the exultant, radiant child at the close. Something about her putting away some of the childish things, and taking up the gentler and nobler ways of first young girlhood now. She thought in an almost undefined way of mother's words as she held the fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly's life seemed cloudless, and all of a sudden there appeared a speck in the firmament--a little cloud which grew rapidly, until the whole heavens were covered with it. Mother had gone away for ever, and there were now nine children in the old gray house.
CHAPTER III.
"BE BRAVE, DEAR."
"Wasn't father with her?" Polly had said when she could find her voice late that evening. "Wasn't father there? I thought father--I always thought father could keep death away."
She was lying on her pretty white bed when she spoke. She had lain there now for a couple of days--not crying nor moaning, but very still, taking no notice of any one. She looked dull and heavy--her sisters thought her very ill.
Dr. Maybright said to Helen--
"You must be very careful of Polly, she has had a shock, and she may take some time recovering. I want you to nurse her yourself, Nell, and to keep the others from the room. For the present, at least, she must be kept absolutely quiet--the least excitement would be very bad for her."
"Polly never cries," said Helen, whose own blue eyes were swollen almost past recognition; "she never cries, she does not even moan. I think, father, what really upset Polly so was when she heard that you--you were there. Polly thinks, she always did think that you could keep death away."
Here poor Helen burst into fresh sobs herself.
"I think," she added, choking as she spoke, "that was what quite broke Polly down--losing mother, and losing faith in your power at the same time."
"I am glad you told me this, Helen," said Dr. Maybright, quietly. "This alters the case. In a measure I can now set Polly's heart at rest. I will see her presently."
"Presently" did not mean that day, nor the next, nor the next, but one beautiful summer's evening just when the sun was setting, and just when its long low western rays were streaming into the lattice-window of the pretty little bower bedroom where