“I don’t think Dan’s will be a lingering case,” Mrs. Lapham was saying. “The lingering cases are the most trying.”
Polly stood motionless. Was it true then, that which she had dreaded, that which she had shrunk from facing? Was it more than a cold that Dan had got? Was Dan really ill? Her Dan? Really ill? Her heart was beating like a trip-hammer, but no one seemed to hear it.
“Queer that the doctors don’t find any cure for lung-trouble,” Mrs. Royce was saying. “Seems as though there must be some way of stopping it, if you could only find it out.”
“Have you tried Kinderling’s Certain Cure?” asked Mrs. Dodge. “They do say that it’s very efficacious.”
“Well, no,” said Mrs. Lapham; “I don’t hold much to medicines myself; but if I did I should think it just a wilful waste to try them for Dan. The 136 boy’s doomed, to begin with, and there’s no help for it.”
“There is a help for it, there shall be a help for it!” cried a voice, vibrating with youthful energy and emotion. “I don’t see how you can talk so, Aunt Lucia! Dan isn’t doomed! he sha’n’t die! I won’t let him die!”
The women looked at Polly and then they looked at one another, fairly abashed by the girl’s spirit; all, that is, excepting Aunt Lucia, who was not impressionable enough to feel anything but the superficial rudeness of Polly’s outbreak.
“That’ll do, Polly,” she said, with a spiritless severity. “This is no place for a display of temper.”
The colour had come back into the girl’s face now, and there were hot tears in her eyes. She turned without a word and left the room, nor was she seen again among the waitresses who came to hand the tea.
Polly was rather ashamed of having run away from the sewing-circle, and she had serious thoughts of going back. It was 137 the first time in her life that she had allowed herself to be routed by circumstances; but somehow she felt as if she could not find it in her heart to hand about tea and seed-cakes, sandwiches and quince-preserve, to people who could think such dreadful thoughts of Dan. And then, besides, she knew what a pleasant surprise it would be for Dan to have her all to himself for an evening. Uncle Seth would be sure to go for his weekly game of checkers with Deacon White, and she could help Dan with his algebra and Latin, and see that he was warm and “comfy,” and perhaps find that he did not cough so much as he did the evening before.