"Can you settle all these details for your mother, and assume responsibilities? Can you take her away, as if she were the child and you the mother, all at once?"
"I can!" This more firmly.
"Can you deny yourself for her, as she has for you? Can you keep cheerful and sunny? Can you hide your fears, if there should be cause for any, in your own heart? Can you be calm and strong, if"--
"No, no!" gasped Polly, dropping her head on the back of the chair and shivering like a leaf. "No, no; don't talk about fears, Dr. George. She will be better. She will be better very soon. I could not live"--
"It is n't so easy to die, my child, with plenty of warm young blood running pell-mell through your veins, and a sixteen-year-old heart that beats like a chronometer."
"I could not bear life without mamma, Dr. George!"
"A human being, made in the image of God, can bear anything, child; but I hope you won't have to meet that sorrow for many a long year yet. I will come in to-morrow and coax your mother into a full assent to my plans; meanwhile, fly home with your medicines. There was a time when you used to give my tonics at night and my sleeping-draught in the morning; but I believe in you absolutely from this day."
Polly put her two slim hands in the kind doctor's, and looking up with brimming eyes into his genial face said, "Dear Dr. George, you may believe in me; indeed, indeed you may!"
Dr. George looked out of his office window, and mused as his eyes followed Polly up the shaded walk under the pepper-trees.
"Oh, these young things, these young things, how one's heart yearns over them!" he sighed. "There she goes, full tilt, notwithstanding the heat; hat swinging in her hand instead of being on her pretty head; her heart bursting with fond schemes to keep that precious mother alive. It's a splendid nature, that girl's; one that is in danger of being wrecked by its own impetuosity, but one so full and rich that it is capable of bubbling over and enriching all the dull and sterile ones about it. Now, if all the money I can rake and scrape together need not go to those languid, boneless children of my languid, boneless sister-in-law, I could put that brave little girl on her feet. I think she will be able to do battle with the world so long as she has her mother for a motive-power. The question is, how will she do it without?"