Just where she lived before.”
Priscilla’s head was fairly nodding by the time prayers were said and Hannah ready to carry her off to bed and tuck her in. But long after she was breathing softly on her pillow, Polly lay awake and thought and thought and thought of sister in her loneliness, at home in the cold and dark, until, at length, she could bear it no longer and the tears came in a flood, quite drenching the fine, embroidered handkerchief Miss Cissy had given her and of whose new crispness she had been so proud.
In a moment Hannah was at her side.
“What is it, honey? Tell Hannah,” she urged very tenderly, as she knelt down and slid her arm under Polly’s head. Then it all came out: about the dreadful ache and longing in her heart and the choking in her throat.
“Why, bless you, you’re homesick and so you are,” explained Priscilla’s nurse encouragingly. “And no wonder at all—not the least in the world. Lots of folks are homesick and they get over it in no time at all, if they just make up their minds to it. Why, think of me! I came over,—away from my father and mother, across the wide sea, when I was but a slip of a girl, not seven years older than you. And think of the gain that’ll come to your sister if you are good and contented here. Why, the hospital doctors will look at her and they’ll say: ‘Now, here is a young woman we must certainly manage to cure whether or not for Miss Cicely Duer says so.’ And the nurses will say the same thing. And they’ll give her a room all to herself with sun coming in at the windows, and there’ll be flowers on the bureau that Miss Cicely and Priscilla’s mamma will send. And her bed will be all soft and white, and the nurses will have on white caps and aprons and cuffs, just spick and spandy and they’ll give her lovely things to eat and then—and then—before you know it almost, sister will be well and walking around as fine as can be. And that will be your doing if you’re a good girl and don’t get mopey and homesick.”
Polly’s eyes were quite dry by the time Hannah paused to take breath. The picture of sister in such pleasant surroundings almost reconciled her to her own good fortune. She saw the sunlight coming in at the windows and the flowers nodding on the bureau and the white-capped nurses hovering round and then, by and by, Hannah’s voice seemed to melt into a gentle drone—the drone of a sleepy fly bobbing against sister’s hospital-room window in the sunlight and then——
Polly opened her eyes to see the sunlight really slanting in at the window of the pretty bedroom in which she and Priscilla had slept. For a moment she lay still, trying to remember where she was and how she came to be in this splendid gold bed, between soft, fleecy blankets and smooth linen. There was another bed just like her own standing against the wall across the room—but the other bed was empty. Then it all came back to her. Priscilla had slept in that other bed. Where was Priscilla?
A sound of splashing and running water seemed to answer her and in another moment Hannah appeared carrying Priscilla wrapped in bath-sheets, fresh from her morning tub.
“Just wait a moment till I have Priscilla dry and then in you go,” threatened Hannah with a pretended frown.
But Polly was not in the least alarmed. She reveled in the warm water and plunged about in the white tub as energetically as if she had been a canary taking a morning dip in a china dish. Then she and Priscilla had breakfast in the nursery, with Peter Pumpkin-Eater and Jack Sprat-Could-Eat-No-Fat looking down at them from the walls and probably wishing they had such delicious milk-toast and cream-of-wheat and poached eggs to feast upon.