The ghost of a smile shone on Polly's April face as she folded Edgar's letter and laid it in its envelope; first came a smile, then a tear, then a dimple, then a sob, then a wave of bright color.
"Edgar is growing up so fast," she thought, "I shall soon be afraid to scold him or advise him, and
"'What will poor Robin do then, poor thing?'
"Upon my word, if I caught him misbehaving nowadays, I believe I should hesitate to remonstrate with him. He will soon be capable of remonstrating with me, at this rate. He is a goose,--oh, there 's no shadow of doubt as to that, but he 's an awfully nice goose."
Mrs. Bird's letter ran thus:--
"MY DEAREST POLLYKINS:----We have lived without you just about as long as we can endure it. The boys have returned to school and college. Mr. Bird contemplates one more trip to Honolulu, and brother John and I need some one to coddle and worry over. I have not spoken to you of your future, because I wished to wait until you opened the subject. It is too late for you to begin your professional training this year, and I think you are far too delicate just now to undertake so arduous a work; however, you are young, and that can wait for a bit. As to the story-telling in the hospitals and asylums, I wish you could find courage and strength to go on with that, not for your own sake alone, but for the sake of others.
"As I have told you before, the money is set aside for that special purpose, and the work will be carried on by somebody. Of course I can get a substitute if you refuse, and that substitute may, after a little time, satisfy the impatient children, who flatten their noses against the window-panes and long for Mias Pauline every day of their meagre lives. But I fear the substitute will never be Polly! She may 'rattle round in your place' (as somebody said under different circumstances), but she can never fill it! Why not spend the winter with us, and do this lovely work, keeping up other studies if you are strong enough? It will be so sweet for you to feel that out of your own sadness you can comfort and brighten the lives of these lonely, suffering children and these motherless or fatherless ones. It will seem hard to begin, no doubt; but new life will flow in your veins when you take up your active, useful work again. The joyousness that God put into your soul before you were born, my Polly, is a sacred trust. You must not hide it in a napkin, dear, or bury it, or lose it. It was given to you only that you should share it with others. It was intended for the world at large, though it was bestowed upon you in particular. Come, dear, to one who knows all about it,--one whom you are sweet enough to call
"YOUR FAIRY GODMOTHER."
"Mrs. Noble," said Polly, with a sober smile, "the Ancon sails on the 20th, and I am going to sail with her."
"So soon? What for, dear?"