“She did look so pale, and sad, and sweet, that I began to think of you without your troublesome Polly, or your troublesome Polly without you; and she was pleased with the flowers and glad that I understood, and willing to love anything that was a girl or that was young,—­oh, you know, mamacita,—­and so I began to cry a little, too; and the first thing I knew I kissed her, which was most informal, if not positively impertinent.  But she seemed to like it, for she kissed me back again, and I ran and jumped on the car, and here I am!  You will have to eat your dinner without any flowers, madam, for you have a vulgarly strong, healthy daughter, and the poor lady in black has n’t.”

This was Polly’s first impression of “the lady in black,” and thus began an acquaintance which was destined before many months to play a very important part in Polly’s fortunes and misfortunes.

What the lady in black thought of Polly, then and subsequently, was told at her own fireside, where she sat, some six weeks later, chatting over an after-dinner cup of coffee with her brother-in-law.

“Take the armchair, John,” said Mrs. Bird; “for I have ’lots to tell you,’ as the young folks say.  I was in the Children’s Hospital about five o’clock to-day.  I have n’t been there for three months, and I felt guilty about it.  The matron asked me to go upstairs into the children’s sitting-room, the one Donald and I fitted up in memory of Carol.  She said that a young lady was telling stories to the children, but that I might go right up and walk in.  I opened the door softly, though I don’t think the children would have noticed if I had fired a cannon in their midst, and stood there, spellbound by the loveliest, most touching scene I ever witnessed.  The room has an open fire, and in a low chair, with the firelight shining on her face, sat that charming, impulsive girl who gave me the flowers at the cemetery—­I told you about her.  She was telling stories to the children.  There were fifteen or twenty of them in the room, all the semi-invalids and convalescents, I should think, and they were gathered about her like flies round a saucer of honey.  Every child that could, was doing its best to get a bit of her dress to touch, or a finger of her hand to hold, or an inch of her chair to lean upon.  They were the usual pale, weary-looking children, most of them with splints and weights and crutches, and through the folding-doors that opened into the next room I could see three more tiny things sitting up in their cots and drinking in every word with eagerness and transport.

“And I don’t wonder.  There is magic in that girl for sick or sorrowing people.  I wish you could have seen and heard her.  Her hair is full of warmth and color; her lips and cheeks are pink; her eyes are bright with health and mischief, and beaming with love, too; her smile is like sunshine, and her voice as glad as a wild bird’s.  I never saw a creature so alive and radiant, and I could feel that the weak little creatures drank in her strength and vigor, without depleting her, as flowers drink in the sunlight.