"There will be use," energetically protested Mrs. Pepper, bringing
another cool bandage, "as long as you've got an eye in your head, Polly
Pepper!"

Dr. Fisher's face, when he first saw the change that the fateful visit
had wrought, and heard the accounts, was very grave indeed. Everything
had been so encouraging on his last visit, that he had come very near
promising Polly speedy freedom from the hateful bandage.

But the little Pepper household soon had something else to think of more
important even than Polly's eyes, for now the heartiest, the jolliest
of all the little group was down--Joel. How he fell sick, they scarcely
knew, it all came so suddenly. The poor, bewildered family had hardly
time to think, before delirium and, perhaps, death stared them in the
face.

When Polly first heard it, by Phronsie's pattering downstairs and
screaming: "Oh, Polly, Joey's dre-ad-ful sick, he is!" she jumped right
up, and tore off the bandage.

"Now, I will help mother! I will, so there!" and in another minute she
would have been up in the sick room. But the first thing she knew, a
gentle but firm hand was laid upon hers; and she found herself back
again in the old rocking-chair, and listening to the Doctor's words
which were quite stern and decisive.

"Now, I tell you," he said, "you must not take off that bandage again;
do you know the consequences? You will be blind! and then you will be a
care to your mother all your life!"

"I shall be blind, anyway," said Polly, despairingly; "so 'twon't make
any difference."

"No; your eyes will come out of it all right, only I did hope," and the
good doctor's face fell--"that the other two boys would escape; but,"
and he brightened up at sight of Polly's forlorn visage--"see you do
your part by keeping still."

But there came a day soon when everything was still around the once
happy little brown house--when only whispers were heard from white lips;
and thoughts were fearfully left unuttered.

On the morning of one of these days, when Mrs. Pepper felt she could not
exist an hour longer without sleep, kind Mrs. Beebe came to stay until
things were either better or worse.

Still the cloud hovered, dark and forbidding. At last, one afternoon,
when Polly was all alone, she could endure it no longer. She flung
herself down by the side of the old bed, and buried her face in the gay
patched bed-quilt.

"Dear God," she said, "make me willing to have anything," she
hesitated--"