d morning, isn't it, Mufty?" said Polly. "No kind of a climate for
a delicate person."

"_Brrrr, brrrrrr!_" Mufty was digging a claw into her shoulder to
adjust himself more comfortably.

"Ow!" cried Polly. Then, lifting him down: "Mufty, you're a very
intelligent cat, and I haven't a doubt that your judgment is as
penetrating as your claws. All the same, I guess you'd better get down
and come with me and help Susan get the breakfast. Don't you hear her
shaking down the kitchen stove?"

Whereupon Mufty, finding himself dropped upon the coldly unsympathetic
ingrain carpet, desisted from further encouraging remarks.

Polly was a schoolgirl still, though she was nearing the dignity of
graduation. She had no special taste for study, but she cherished the
Yankee reverence for education, and although it was not quite clear to
her how Latin declensions and algebraic symbols were to help her in
after-life, she committed them to memory with a very good grace, and
enjoyed all the satisfaction of work for work's sake.

It happened, therefore, that the pursuit of learning interfered for
several hours with the far more important object which she had at
heart to-day; and it was not until two o'clock that she found herself
at liberty to do what every nerve and fibre of her young organism was
straining to accomplish.

[Illustration: "Mufty hastily established himself across her shoulder."]

"I'm not going right home," she said to Dan; "I've got an errand to
do."

"Polly's got an idea," Dan said to himself, struck with the eagerness
in her face, and the haste with which she walked away. "What a girl
she is for ideas, any way!" and he trudged along the snowy road with
the other boys, getting rather out of breath in the effort to keep up
with them.

Polly, meanwhile, stepped swiftly on her way. She was thinking of Dan.
He at least was a natural student and had always led his class. She
was not only fond of Dan, but proud of him, too. He was a handsome
boy, with those clear, dark eyes of his in which a less partial
observer than Polly might have read the promise of fine things.

"Yes," Polly said to herself, as she sped along the road that
glittering winter's day: "Dan isn't just an ordinary boy. He's an
unusual boy. Why, the world couldn't _afford_ to lose Dan!" and she
looked into the faces of the passers-by, as if to challenge their
acquiescence in this bold statement.

Whether Dan was all that Polly thought him, only the