ave visitors," he smiled; "but
they must n't stay too long. Say good-bye, Polly."

"Will you bring her again tomorrow?" invited David timidly. "And
let her stay long enough to tell me a story?"

"I should n't wonder," the Doctor promised. And they left the
boy smiling as he had not smiled since he had been in the
hospital.

After that, Polly went every day to see David, until, one morning,
Dr. Dudley told her that he was not quite well enough to have a
visitor. She had come to look forward to her quiet talks with the
blue-eyed lad as the happiest portion of the whole day, for Miss
Hortensia Price still stayed in the convalescent ward, and the
Doctor had been too busy to take her out in his automobile. Elsie
and Brida and Aimee and the rest were all good comrades, yet none
of them possessed David's powers of quick comprehension. Often
Polly had to explain things to them; David always kept up with her
thought--there was the difference. And David, notwithstanding
his present proneness to discouragement, was a most winsome boy.

So the first day that she was not allowed to maker her customary
visit seemed a long day indeed, and eagerly she awaited the next
morning. But several days passed before she again saw David.
Then it was but for a very few minutes, and he was so wan and weak
that she went away feeling sorrowful and anxious. Yet Dr. Dudley
told her that she had done his patient good. That was a slight
comfort.

The next day, and the next, the lad was again too ill for company,
and a few sentences which Polly overheard filled her with
foreboding. She was putting fresh sheets on one of the cots--a
task which she had learned to do well--when she caught David's
name.

"His heart is very weak," one of the stairs nurses was saying to
Miss Price. "He can't stand many more such sinking spells. Dr.
Dudley has given orders to be called at once, day or night, if he
should have another."

Here the voice dropped, and Polly could not catch the words; but
she had heard enough. The sheet went on crookedly. Polly did not
know it, her eyes were so blurred with tears. She kept the sorry
news to herself, and all day long the children wondered what made
Polly so sober.

If she could have seen Dr. Dudley she would have asked him about
David; but for several days she caught only passing glimpses of
him, when he was too busy to be questioned. The little girl grew
more and more anxious, but kept hoping that because