"Over-doing in work is not likely to lead to under-doing a breakdown," Miss Bradbury replied to Mrs. Scollard's remark. "Nature is an excellent accountant, and knows how to collect her dues. I think I should be satisfied with what ails you, if I were you, Charlotte."
She altered the position of Mrs. Scollard's pillows and smoothed them with a touch singularly gentle in such an energetic person, and beckoned Margery to follow her into the dining-room. Laura sat here in an attitude of despair, her feet stuck straight out before her indifferently to the size of the room, her arms hanging over the back of her chair. Bob and Happie were trying to occupy themselves with the lessons which their mother would have required had she been well, and serene little Polly sat rocking her doll, she the more sleepy of the two, though the doll's eyes did droop with the motion of the rocking-chair.
Miss Bradbury took the chair which Polly had occupied when the little girl yielded it up on her entrance, and gathered Polly into her lap, who in turn still held Phyllis Lovelocks tight.
"Now, my dears," began Miss Keren-happuch in her businesslike way that covered so much tenderness, "you all look dreadfully worried. You must not; your mother will get well after she gets to the country."
"Why, Aunt Keren!" exclaimed Happie reproachfully. "When you know she can't even afford to stay in the city!"
"Which is the reason that she is going to my farm, that, and the fact that she must have fresh air and quiet," said Miss Keren-happuch.
"Your farm!" exclaimed all the children together.
"Yes; in Pennsylvania," said Miss Bradbury calmly. "I have never seen it, and I doubt strongly that I shall be particularly pleased with the sight. But a farm it is, of some seventy acres, up in the mountains, and there is where we are going in two weeks."
"We don't understand," cried Bob, after he had exchanged excited and bewildered glances with the others.
"There is nothing more to understand," declared Miss Bradbury. "Polly, your doll's arm will break off if you don't turn it around. Your mother must rest, there is no money to provide that rest, I must go to the country somewhere, so instead of boarding this summer, I am going to open that house of mine, which I have never seen, and you children are going to keep house for your mother and me indefinitely. It's not in the least difficult nor mysterious."