“Thank you, Dr. Abbe,” answered Lilith, with a smiling little bow, “I should be delighted to go; but how do you propose to make the journey? I believe neither of us can drive the car, and my wings are not here.”
“Thank you,” laughed the Doctor. “I am hoping that Miss Dudley will offer to take us down to the Overlook station.”
Which Polly hastened to do, accompanied by a burst of laughter.
It was one of those mornings that was sunny on the mountain-top, while heavy mists lay along the valleys and obscured the lower hills. “We’ll have thunder before night,” prophesied Benedicta, as she bade the carload good-bye from the piazza. “Better take your umbrella!” But the clear sunshine around them made her advice seem a joke, and it was received only with amusement.
Polly’s drive alone up the mountain gave her a wonderful sense of peace. The restful, upreaching pines; the gleeful brooks; the great ferns; the joyous birds; the landscape in its sunny content;—all these ministered to her spirit, until she felt as if nothing could ever trouble her again.
In this happy mood she would have liked to choose some nook apart from the others and read and dream in company with one of her favorite authors. But she had many tasks, and to-day was crowded with them because of Lilith’s absence. So with singing in her heart and on her lips she put away small garments and brought out fresh ones, mopped and dusted, gave drinks of water to occupants of pillowed chairs, fetched books and pictures and games, and did countless other things with smiling good cheer and happy words that went a very long way towards making her small patients comfortable and glad.
“Guess I’ll can some of these blueberries,” Benedicta told her on one of her trips to the kitchen. “A man came along with them early, and I bought more than I realized. He gave me bouncing good measure, and there seems to be a superfluity—see those panfuls!” She pointed to the heaped-up fruit.
“I’m glad you bought them,” returned Polly. “I never tire of blueberries, fresh or cooked.”
“Well,” went on the housekeeper, a pleased, relieved look on her face, “I knew you liked ’em. So do I. And I’ve got time to can to-day; there isn’t going to be any man to dinner. You’ll be glad of them next winter. Blueberry cake won’t go amiss when the wind is howling round the hospital and the snow is three feet deep.”
“We don’t often have three feet of snow down our way,” laughed Polly; “but blueberry cake will taste just as well even if the snow does lack a foot or two.”