What I wanted to say to you is this, Polly.

Your mother must have an entire change.

Six months ago I tried to send her to a rest-cure, but she refused to go anywhere without you, saying that you were her best tonic." Two tears ran down Polly's cheeks.
"Tell me that again, please," she said softly, looking out of the window.
"She said--if you will have the very words, and all of them--that you were sun and stimulant, fresh air, medicine, and nourishment, and that she could not exist without those indispensables, even in a rest-cure." Polly's head went down on the windowsill in a sudden passion of tears.
"Hoity-toity! that 's a queer way of receiving a compliment, young woman!" She tried to smile through her April shower.
"It makes me so happy, yet so unhappy, Dr.George.

Mamma has been working her strength away so many years, and I 've been too young to realize it, and too young to prevent it, and now that I am grown up I am afraid it is too late." "Not too late, at all," said Dr.George cheerily; "only we must begin at once and attend to the matter thoroughly.

Your mother has been in this southern climate too long, for one thing; she needs a change of air and scene.