THE DOCTOR GIVES POLLY A PRESCRIPTION.
As the summer wore away, Mrs. Oliver daily grew more and more languid,
until at length she was forced to ask a widowed neighbor, Mrs.
Chadwick, to come and take the housekeeping cares until she should feel
stronger. But beef-tea and drives, salt-water bathing and tonics,
seemed to do no good, and at length there came a day when she had not
sufficient strength to sit up.
The sight of her mother actually in bed in the daytime gave Polly a
sensation as of a cold hand clutching at her heart, and she ran for Dr.
Edgerton in an agony of fear. But good "Dr. George" (as he was always
called, because he began practice when his father, the old doctor, was
still living) came home with her, cheered her by his hopeful view of
the case, and asked her to call at his office that afternoon for some
remedies.
After dinner was over, Polly kissed her sleeping mother, laid a rose on
her pillow for good-by, and stole out of the room.
Her heart was heavy as she walked into the office where the doctor sat
alone at his desk.
"Good-day, my dear!" he said cordially, as he looked up, for she was
one of his prime favorites. "Bless my soul, how you do grow, child!
Why you are almost a woman!"
"I am quite a woman," said Polly, with a choking sensation in her
throat; "and you have something to say to me, Dr. George, or you would
n't have asked me to leave mamma and come here this stifling day; you
would have sent the medicine by your office-boy."
Dr. George laid down his pen in mild, amazement. "You are a woman, in
every sense of the word, my dear! Bless my soul, how you do hit it
occasionally, you sprig of a girl! Now, sit by that window, and we 'll
talk. What I wanted to say to you is this, Polly. Your mother must
have an entire change. Six months ago I tried to send her to a
rest-cure, but she refused to go anywhere without you, saying that you
were her best tonic."
Two tears ran down Polly's cheeks.
"Tell me that again, please," she said softly, looking out of the
window.
"She said--if you will have the very words, and all of them--that you
were sun and stimulant, fresh air, medicine, and nourishment, and that
she could not exist without those indispensables, even in a rest-cure."
Polly's head went down on the windowsill in a sudden passion of tears.
"Hoity-toity! that 's a queer way of receiving a compliment, young
woman!"
She tried to smile through her April shower.
"It makes me so happy, yet so unhappy, Dr. George. Mamma has been
working her strength away so many years, and I 've been too young to
realize it, and too young to prevent it, and now that I am grown up I
am afraid it is too late."
"Not too late, at all," said Dr. George cheerily; "only we must begin
at once and attend to the matter thoroughly. Your mother has been in
this southern climate too long, for one thing; she needs a change of
air and scene. San Francisco will do, though it 's not what I should
choose. She must be taken entirely away from her care, and from
everything that will remind her of it; and she must live quietly, where
she will not have to make a continual effort to smile and talk to
people three times a day. Being agreeable, polite, and good-tempered
for fifteen years, without a single lapse, will send anybody into a
decline. You 'll never go that way, my Polly! Now, pardon me, but how
much ready money have you laid away?"
"Three hundred and twelve dollars."
"Whew!"
"It is a good deal," said Polly, with modest pride; "and it would have
been more yet if we had not just painted the house."
"'A good deal!' my poor lambkin! I hoped it was $1012, at least; but,
however, you have the house, and that is as good as money. The house
must be rented, at once, furniture, boarders, and all, as it stands.
It ought to bring $85 or $95 a month, in these times, and you can
manage on that, with the $312 as a reserve."
"What if the tenant should give up the house as soon as we are fairly
settled in San Francisco?" asked Polly, with an absolutely new gleam of
caution and business in her eye.
"Brava! Why do I attempt to advise such a capable little person?
Well, in the first place, there are such things as leases; and in the
second place, if your tenant should move out, the agent must find you
another in short order, and you will live, meanwhile, on the reserve
fund. But, joking aside, there is very little risk. It is going to be
a great winter for Santa Barbara, and your house is attractive,
convenient, and excellently located. If we can get your affairs into
such shape that your mother will not be anxious, I hope, and think,
that the entire change and rest, together with the bracing air, will
work wonders. I shall give you a letter to a physician, a friend of
mine, and fortunately I shall come up once a month during the winter to
see an old patient who insists on retaining me just from force of
habit."
"And in another year, Dr. George, I shall be ready to take care of
mamma myself; and then--
"She shall sit on a cushion, and sew a fine seam,
And feast upon strawberries, sugar, and cream."
"Assuredly, my Polly, assuredly." The doctor was pacing up and down
the office now, hands in pockets, eyes on floor. "The world is your
oyster; open it, my dear,--open it. By the way," with a sharp turn,
"with what do you propose to open it?"
"I don't know yet, but not with boarders, Dr. George."
"Tut, tut, child; must n't despise small things!"
"Such as Mr. Greenwood," said Polly irrepressibly, "weight two hundred
and ninety pounds; and Mrs. Darling, height six feet one inch; no, I
'll try not to despise small things, thank you!"
"Well, if there 's a vocation, it will 'call,' you know, Polly. I 'd
rather like you for an assistant, to drive my horse and amuse my
convalescents. Bless my soul! you 'd make a superb nurse, except"--
"Except what, sir?"
"You 're not in equilibrium yet, my child; you are either up or down,
generally up. You bounce, so to speak. Now, a nurse must n't bounce;
she must be poised, as it were, or suspended, betwixt and between, like
Mahomet's coffin. But thank Heaven for your high spirits, all the
same! They will tide you over many a hard place, and the years will
bring the 'inevitable yoke' soon enough, Polly," and here Dr. George
passed behind the girl's chair and put his two kind hands on her
shoulders. "Polly, can you be really a woman? Can you put the
little-girl days bravely behind you?"
"I can, Dr. George." This in a very trembling voice.
"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?"