.

And then came Polly,--and Mrs.Bird with her, thank Heaven!--Polly breathless and glowing, looking up at the bay window for her mother's smile of welcome.
In a few seconds the terrible news was broken, and Polly, overpowered with its awful suddenness, dropped before it as under a physical blow.
It was better so.

Mrs.Bird carried her home for the night, as she thought, but a merciful blur stole over the child's tired brain, and she lay for many weeks in a weary illness of delirium and stupor and fever.
Meanwhile, Edgar acted as brother, son, and man of the house.

He it was who managed everything, from the first sorrowful days up to the closing of the tiny upper flat where so much had happened: not great things of vast outward importance, but small ones,--little miseries and mortifications and struggles and self-denials and victories, that made the past half year a milestone in his life.
A week finished it all! It takes a very short time, he thought, to scatter to the winds of heaven all the gracious elements that make a home.

Only a week; and in the first days of June, Edgar went back to Santa Barbara for the summer holidays without even a sight of his brave, helpful girl-comrade.
He went back to his brother's congratulations, his sister's kisses, his mother's happy tears, and his father's hearty hand-clasp, full of renewed pride and belief in his eldest son.