It was long that her father was gone. A dozen times Polly had been sure that she heard his steps, but the moments dragged on and on, without bringing him. At length the door opened and he entered. Polly was out of bed in an instant and crouching at the head of the stairs, shivering with cold and fear, while she waited to hear his first words to her mother. She thought he would never get his coat off and go into the parlor. When he did, she heard something that seemed to stop her breath.
"I've only just pulled Alan through, to-night," the doctor was saying to his wife. "When I went in, I thought there wasn't much chance for him; but the worst is over, for the present."
"What was it?" asked his wife anxiously.
"Acute pneumonia, as much as anything," answered the doctor; "but it's mixed up with his rheumatism till he's a poor, forlorn little bundle of aches and pains. They sent for me just in time, too. If they'd waited till morning, we should have lost our Alan."
"What brought it on?" asked Mrs. Adams, and her voice was a little unsteady as she spoke.
"That is the strangest part of it," replied her husband. "He came in this noon, dripping wet, and Mrs. Hapgood hasn't been able to make him tell what had happened."
"Oh, mamma!"
The doctor and his wife both started up, at the sound of the strange, stifled voice. In the door directly behind them stood Polly, barefooted and with her teeth chattering violently, while her face was so swollen with tears as to be almost unrecogizable.
"Polly!"
Mrs. Adams sprang towards her, but Polly waved her off.