d in her hands as she
nervously opened it and took out the contents.

"Polly, Polly!" she cried, excitedly, "didn't I tell you they were
blooming, red and handsome."

But Polly's eyes were burning with delirium and her lips babbled
meaninglessly.

The nurse held the poppies over her.

Her arms reached out caressingly.

"Oh, miss!" she cried, her mind coming back from the shadows. "They
have come at last, the darlin's, the sweethearts, the loves, the
beauties." She held them in a close embrace. "They're from 'ome,
they're from 'ome!" she gasped painfully, for her breath came with
difficulty now. "I can't just see them, miss, the lights is movin' so
much, and the way the bed 'eaves, but, tell me, miss, is there a little
silky one, hedged with w'ite? It was mother's favourite one of hall.
I'd like to 'ave it in my 'and, miss."

The nurse put it in her hand. She was only a young nurse and her face
was wet with tears.

"It's like 'avin' my mother's 'and, miss, it is," she murmured softly.
"Ye wouldn't mind the dark if ye 'ad yer mother's 'and, would ye, miss?"

And then the nurse took Polly's throbbing head in her strong young
arms, and soothed its restless tossing with her cool soft touch, and
told her through her tears of that other Friend, who would go with her
all the way.

"I'm that 'appy, miss," Polly murmured faintly. "It's like I was goin'
'ome. Say that again about the valley," and the nurse repeated tenderly
that promise of incomparable sweetness:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me,
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

"It's just like 'avin' mother's 'and to 'old the little silky one,"
Polly murmured sleepily.

The nurse put the poppies beside Polly's face on the pillow, and
drawing a screen around her went on to the next patient. A case of
urgent need detained her at the other end of the ward, and it was not
until the dawn was shining blue in the windows that she came back on
her rounds.

Polly lay just as she had left her. The crimson petals lay thick upon
her face and hair. The homesickness and redness of weeping had gone
forever from her eyes, for they were looking now upon the King in his
beauty! In her hand, now cold and waxen, she held one little silky
poppy, red with edges of white. Polly had gone home.

There was a whisper among the poppies that grew behind the cookhouse
that morning as the first gleam of t