"
"What are her chances do you think?" the doctor asked
gravely.
He was a wiry little man with a face like leather, but
his touch brought healing and his presence, hope.
"She is dying of homesickness as well as typhoid," the
nurse said sadly, "and she seems so anxious to get better,
poor thing! She often says 'I can't die miss, for what'll
happen mother.' But for the last two days, in her delirium,
she seems to be worrying more about her work and her
flowers. I think they were pretty hard people she lived
with. 'Surely she'll praise me this time,' she often
says, 'I've tried my 'ardest.' The strenuous life has
been too much for poor Polly. Listen to her now!"
Polly was singing. Clear and steady and sweet, her voice
rang over the quiet ward, and many a fevered face was
raised to listen. Polly's mind was wandering in the
shadows, but she still sang the songs of home in a strange
land:
Down by the biller there grew a green willer
A weeping all night with the bank for a piller.
And over and over again she sang with a wavering cadence,
incoherently sometimes, but always with tender pleading,
something about "where the stream was a-flowin', the
gentle kine lowin', and over my grave keep the green
willers growin'."
"It is pathetic to hear her," the nurse said, "and now
listen to her asking about her poppies."
"In the box, miss; I brought the seed hacross the hocean,
and they wuz beauties, they wuz wot came hup.
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