The weeks before the secret came out where very happy weeks for Polly.  Only a ew days after her visit to Mrs. Jocelyn came a package, a large, flat, nearly square package.  It arrived while she was at school, and she found the children eyeing it curiously as it lay on Miss Lucy’s desk.

“It’s for you,” announced Stella, “and she said there must n’t anybody touch it.  She would n’t open it herself.”

Polly looked at the white parcel, and wondered, too.  She had been expecting photographs; but this was too big for those, she decided.  Hastily she untied the string.  Miss Lucy came in just as she turned back the wrapper.

“O-h!”

“Why, Polly May, you’ve gone and had your picture taken!”

“My!  Ain’t it splendid?”

“Whew!  Bet that cost somethin’!”

Miss Lucy caught a glimpse of the photograph, which brought her quickly across the room.

“Polly dear, what a surprise this is!”

“I don’t think it looks much like me,” murmured the little girl, staring wonderingly and the beautiful picture.

It was of large size, exquisitely finished in carbon, and mounted in a handsome folder.

“Why, it looks exactly like her!  Don’t it, Miss Lucy?” queried Mabel.

“I think I never saw a better likeness,” smiled the nurse.

“There!” exulted Mabel.  “Say, what made you think it did n’t?”

But Polly only laughed a little uncertainly.  “Never mind, if you like it!” she told them.

“Oh, here’s another kind!” piped Stella, whose curious fingers had discovered a photograph showing Polly in a different pose.

This was full-length; the other was only head and shoulders.

“There’s one more, I think,” said Polly, “where I had some flowers in my hand.”

A hunt soon revealed it,—­“the very sweetest of all!” Leonora declared.

The girls hung over it rapturously.

“Will you give me one?” begged Mabel.

“And me”—­“And me?”—­“And me?” chorused the others.

“Polly cannot tell right off just what she will be able to do,” interposed Miss Lucy.  “Dr. Dudley has n’t seen them yet.  Suppose you run down and show them to him, Polly.”

Down the stairs skipped Polly, glad to get away from the too eager children.

The Doctor received them delightedly.  Polly watched him with thoughtful eyes.

“Do you think they look like me?” she ventured at last.

“Very much,” he answered, smiling at the anxious pucker between Polly’s eyebrows.  “What is the trouble?”

The pink in her cheeks deepened to crimson.  “I am not—­so pretty as that,” she faltered.  “You know I’m not.  And I hate to give away such pictures.  It seems as if folks would think I wanted to make out I looked better than I really do.”

Dr. Dudley’s eyes were bent to the photograph in hand.  He thought hard and fast.  Should he tell her the truth,—­that the beautiful black-and-white print, with all its exquisite softness, scarcely did justice to the delicate mobile face?