“I believe I’ll go and see Miss Polly,” she decided, after a little reflection. “We haven’t any of us been for more than a week, and if I try to read my head may get bad again.” So she rose from the sofa, and having removed the wet towel, and smoothed her hair, started for her call. But just outside the nursery door she paused, and her face brightened. “I’ll run down to the yard first, and pick her a bunch of syringa,” she said to herself. “The bush is all out, and Grandma will never notice if I take a little. Miss Polly loves flowers.” Accordingly, instead of going to the trunk-room, she ran down the three flights of stairs to the dining-room, and out through the open French window, to the little balcony, from which a flight of steps descended to the back yard. It was a large sunny yard, and in old Dr. Winslow’s time had been quite a garden, but Grandma did not take much interest in flowers, and there was little of the garden left, except a syringa-bush and a few rose-bushes, which seldom bloomed until after the family had gone away for the summer. It was Mary’s Sunday out, but Bridget was entertaining visitors in the kitchen. Daisy could hear their voices, as she hastily plucked a small bunch of the fragrant flowers. She dared not take many, lest Grandma should notice, and ask awkward questions. She was just turning back to the steps, when her ear caught some words uttered by one of Bridget’s visitors. “She’s awful bad,” the woman was saying; “I don’t believe she’ll last the summer through. It’s a terrible pity, for a sweeter, kinder little thing never lived in this world, and as to her patience, stayin’ all day long, with never a soul to speak to, it just makes you ashamed to complain about anything yourself.” Daisy stood still, and her heart gave a sudden throb. Could they be talking of Miss Polly? She remembered that Bridget and Mary knew some of the servants in the boarding-house next door. “Ain’t she got nobody belongin’ to her?” Bridget asked, sympathetically. “She’s got a brother somewhere, but I guess he don’t care much about her. He never comes to see her, anyhow. If Miss Collins was at home I wouldn’t worry, but she’s gone off to take care of her sick sister in Virginia, and Mrs. Brown, who’s looking after the house while she’s away, don’t take no more interest in poor little Miss Polly than if she wasn’t there at all. Why, the poor thing don’t eat enough to keep a canary alive, and she’s gettin’ paler and thinner before your eyes.” “I suppose you wouldn’t dare have a doctor to see her, would you, Maggie?” put in another voice. What Maggie answered Daisy did not wait to hear. She had heard enough already, and her heart was very heavy, as she mounted the steps, with her precious flowers. Until that moment she had not realized how much she had grown to love Miss Polly.