They had a very cozy evening, she and Dan, just as she had planned it in every particular but one, namely, the cough. There was no improvement in that since the night before, and for the first time the boy spoke of it.
“I say, Polly! Isn’t it stupid, the way this cold hangs on? Do you remember how long it is since I caught it?” 138
“Why, no, Dan. It does seem a good while, doesn’t it? I guess it must be about over by this time. Don’t you know how suddenly those things go?”
Dan, who was on his way to bed, had stopped, close to the air-tight stove, to warm his hands.
“I wish it were summer, Polly,” he said, with a wistful look in his great black eyes that cut Polly to the heart. “It’s been such a cold winter; and a fellow gets kind of tired of barking all the time.”
“It’ll be spring before you know it, Dan, you see if it isn’t, and you’ll forget you ever had a cold in your life.”
And when, half an hour later, the evening was over, and Polly was safe in her bed, she buried her head in her pillow and cried herself to sleep.
But tears and bewailings were not a natural resource with Polly, whose forte was action. Her first thought in the morning was: what should she do about it? Something must be done, of course, and she was the only one to do it. What it was she had not the faintest idea, but 139 then it was her business to find out. Here was she, eighteen years old, strong and hearty, and with good practical common sense, the natural guardian and protector of her younger brother. It was time she bestirred herself!
As a first step, she got up with the sun and dressed herself, and then she slipped down-stairs to the parlour where such of her father’s books as had been rescued from auction were lodged; her father had been the village doctor. All the medical works had been sold, and many other volumes besides, but among those remaining was an old encyclopædia which had proved to Polly a mine of information on many subjects. As she took down the third volume, she heard a portentous Meaouw! and there, outside the window, stood Mufty, the grey cat, rubbing himself against the frosty pane. Polly opened the window and Mufty sprang in, bringing a puff of frosty air in his wake. Without so much as a word of thanks he walked over to the stove. Finding it, however, cold, as only an empty air-tight stove can be cold, he 140 strolled, with a disengaged air, beneath which lurked a very distinct intention, toward the only warm object in the room, namely, Polly in her woollen gown. She had the volume open on the table before her, and was deep in its perusal, murmuring as she read.
“Appears to have committed its ravages from the earliest time,” Polly read, “and its distribution is probably universal, though far from equal.”