Polly looked at him squarely but was too cautious to reply.
“You can’t take a joke. You don’t know when a feller’s funnin’. Why, bless your boots, I wouldn’t have took the kid’s doll off of her for a farm! I was only foolin’, just to see what ye’d do and—my eye! but the joke was on me—for you did it! you gave me as good a chase as I want in a hurry! Say now, I like you a lot! I like any feller a lot that’s got nerve and grit and when I like a feller a lot I stand by him! I’m going to stand by you, see?”
Then suddenly and without any warning Polly felt her eyes fill.
The newsboy’s face fell. “Say now,” he exclaimed in a tone of anxious reproach, “you ain’t goin’ to weaken now, are ye? When there ain’t anything to cry for? An’ me thinkin’ you was an out-an’-outer, and countin’ on your grit and savin’ I’d stand by you!”
Polly smiled through the mist in her eyes. “I guess that’s just what made me,” she confessed. “You see, I don’t know my way, and my sister’s sick at the hospital and I can’t find her, and I thought I was all alone, and when you said you’d stand by me—why——”
The newsboy nodded. “I know,” he assured her bluffly. “But now, just you leave that whole business to me. I’ll find the ’ospittle for you without any trouble at all an’ you wait an’ see if your sister ain’t better by the time you get there. That bundle of yours ’s no good. Who did it up? Well, they—they didn’t know how, that’s all. Now you see this leather? It’s what goes around my papers! Just you watch me strap it round your bundle, fast an’ tight, like this—so-fashion! There y’ are. See! Now come along. Step lively and keep off the grass!”
Polly followed as fast as she could in his swinging steps. He guided her across the crowded streets as safely and swiftly as if they had been country lanes and, though it proved a long, long walk, almost before she knew it, she found herself at the door of the hospital.
“Now, I tell you what it is,” explained her escort, as she turned to thank him. “I’ll wait out here till you give me the word that everything’s O.K. inside. If ’tis, why, good enough! I’ll go about my business, but if it isn’t—well—all you’ve got to do is to give me a nod and I’ll be there for whatever ’s to be done.”
So Polly went up the steps and timidly rang the bell. Her heart beat suffocatingly as she asked for her sister, but no one in the office seemed to be able to tell anything about her. Some one was sent up-stairs to enquire and, meanwhile, she sat upon a wooden bench in the cool, tiled hall and waited. It seemed ages before the messenger returned. Nurses flitted through the corridors, laughing and chatting together, telephone-bells rang, dispatch-boys came and went and the office was astir with business. But Polly’s mind and heart were too full for her to feel any concern in all the interesting bustle and commotion about her. All she longed for was to be led to that quiet room up-stairs where sister lay.