Polly | Page 4

she led her small brood with

silken reins.
Dr. Maybright was a great deal older than his wife. He was a tall man,
still very erect in his figure, with square shoulders, and a keen, bright,
kindly face. He had a large practice, extending over many miles, and
although he had not the experience which life in a city would have
given him, he was a very clever physician, and many of his brothers in
the profession prophesied eminence for him whenever he chose to
come forward and take it. Dr. Maybright was often absent from home
all day long, sometimes also in the dead of night the children heard his
carriage wheels as they bowled away on some errand of mercy. Polly
always thought of her father as a sort of angel of healing, who came
here, there, and everywhere, 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