When Polly Was Eighteen

by Emma C. Dowd

A little hand was reached out, to stroke Polly’s. “My’s glad, My’s very glad, Mi’ Duddy.” And he shut his eyes in content.

Polly was a frequent visitor in Paradise Ward, and “Little Duke” was as beloved by her as by Dr. Dudley himself.

Few of the small patients needed much attention that night from their new nurse; still, Polly really slept but little. The novelty of her position as well as plans for the near future pushed sleep into the background and kept it there.

The next day nurses were as scarce as on the night previous, and Polly, signifying her willingness to remain in Paradise Ward, was gladly allowed to stay. But when a trained assistant was to be had, and Polly begged not to be turned out, Dr. Dudley remonstrated against the confinement, maintaining that by September Polly would be in no condition to return to college. The girl, however, insisted that the light work was just what she needed to keep her mind busy with outside thoughts, and finally she had things her own way. Her father and mother could see plainly enough that she was lighter-hearted than she had been since her separation from David, and her patients all agreed with Little Duke, who told Polly very solemnly “Mi’ Duddy, if you go away, My shall feel rot-ting!”

So Polly did not go. Instead, she began at once to carry out some of the many ideas that had come to her since her installment in Paradise Ward. Polly was as observing now as she had been in her childhood, and a day had not gone by before she was planning little new things for the supposedly perfect ward. She was aware that she had only to hint of these to Mrs. Gresham to have them there at once; but she did not wish to apply to the founder of the hospital. So when she could get somebody to take her place for an hour or two she would go off on shopping trips and come home with all sorts of accessories for the ward. First she brought a new hair-ribbon for Clementina Cunio, a bright pink ribbon to replace the one of dingy brown. And the child’s delight repaid Polly in full for the small expenditure of pocket-money. But that small purchase set in motion a chain of wishes which Polly feared for a time was to be a chain after the style of the usual ten-cent concatenations. When William Moleski saw the pink bow sitting so jauntily on Clementina’s head, he was instantly seized with a desire for a tie of like color for his neck. Then Timmy Dennis began to long for a similar adornment to tie around the collar of his little striped nightgown. The color had taken the ward by storm, for one after another expressed a wish, more or less boldly, for some ornament of the same hue. The young nurse was mildly surprised when Annette Lacouchière asked for a pink dress; but her astonishment reached its height at the observation of Little Duke.

“Mi’ Duddy, My’s good boy. My won’t cry ever when My is inside o’ pink all over!”

Polly brought home other and apparently more useful articles than pink ribbons. One day it was some pretty boxes of tiny sheets of note-paper, with so many little envelopes, in the same delicate tint, that one might spoil two or three and still have enough left.

At another time her purchases were two little washtubs, each big enough to hold a dolly’s frock, and—most charming of all—two little electric flatirons to make the dainty wardrobes smooth and beautiful. These had been suggested by Zulette Mardee’s sighing statement to her next-chair neighbor, that her beloved Theodora hadn’t “a single clean dress to her name,” and that nothing would make her so happy as to put them into the washtub. Grissel, the neighbor, had agreed with her perfectly, whereupon the succeeding day both little girls were in soapsuds up to their elbows, their small tables wet from end to end and spilling over, and their faces joyous as a June morning.

“You are making yourself a lot of work,” commented a young nurse to Polly.

“A lot of pleasure, you mean, don’t you?” returned the Doctor’s daughter.