CHAPTER III.
THE DOCTOR GIVES POLLY A PRESCRIPTION.
As the summer wore away, Mrs.Oliver daily grew more and more languid, until at length she was forced to ask a widowed neighbor, Mrs.
Chadwick, to come and take the housekeeping cares until she should feel stronger.

But beef-tea and drives, salt-water bathing and tonics, seemed to do no good, and at length there came a day when she had not sufficient strength to sit up.
The sight of her mother actually in bed in the daytime gave Polly a sensation as of a cold hand clutching at her heart, and she ran for Dr.
Edgerton in an agony of fear.

But good "Dr.George" (as he was always called, because he began practice when his father, the old doctor, was still living) came home with her, cheered her by his hopeful view of the case, and asked her to call at his office that afternoon for some remedies.
After dinner was over, Polly kissed her sleeping mother, laid a rose on her pillow for good-by, and stole out of the room.
Her heart was heavy as she walked into the office where the doctor sat alone at his desk.
"Good-day, my dear!" he said cordially, as he looked up, for she was one of his prime favorites.

"Bless my soul, how you do grow, child! Why you are almost a woman!" "I am quite a woman," said Polly, with a choking sensation in her throat; "and you have something to say to me, Dr.George, or you would n't have asked me to leave mamma and come here this stifling day; you would have sent the medicine by your office-boy." Dr.George laid down his pen in mild, amazement.

"You are a woman, in every sense of the word, my dear! Bless my soul, how you do hit it occasionally, you sprig of a girl! Now, sit by that window, and we 'll talk.