future could
prove,--that future that Polly was about to secure to him. If she
idealised him a bit, why, all the better for Dan, and all the better
for Polly, too. One thing is sure, that no one who could have looked
into the sister's heart that winter's day would have doubted her for
an instant when she said to herself:

"He sha'n't die! I won't let him die! But, _oh! how I wish that cough
were mine!_"

From her interview with the doctor, Polly brought away with her only
one word, "_Colorado_"; and with that word shining like a great snowy
peak in her imagination, she took another swift walk to a farmhouse
on the outskirts of the village, where dwelt a man whose son had gone
to Colorado three years ago.

"Great place!" he told her; "Great place, Colorado! Mile up in the
air! Prairie-dogs and Rocky Mountains! Big cattle ranches that could
put all Fieldham in their vest pockets! Cold as thunder, hot as
thunder! Blizzards and cyclones and water-spouts! Wind! Blow you right
out of your boots! Cures sick folks? Oh, yes. Better than all the
doctors. Braces 'em right up--stands 'em on their legs! Nothing like
it, so Bill says. Costs a sight to get out there; oh, yes! Fifty
dollars and fifteen cents! Queer about that fifteen cents. Seems as
though they might ha' throwed that in on such a long trip's that; but
them railroads ain't got no insides any way; and when you once git out
there, why, _there you are!_"

The philosophy of that last remark appealed particularly to Polly.
"When you once git out there, why, _there you are!_" Somehow it seemed
to make everything perfectly simple and easy. Blizzards and cyclones?
Yes, to be sure. But then it was the air that you went out for, Polly
reasoned, that was what was going to cure you; and perhaps the more
you got of it the quicker you would get cured. And Polly hurried home
from her last visit, flushed and eager for the fray. She found her
uncle in the barn putting up his horses.

Mr. Seth Lapham was a good man; there could be no doubt about that.
Nothing but a sincere and very efficient conscience could have so
tempered his natural penuriousness as to cause him to receive into his
family a mere sister-in-law's children and allow them to "want for
nothing"; that, too, at a time when his own children, John and Martha,
were still a bill of expense to him, before their respective
marriages. For many years, Uncle Seth had conscientiously, if not
lavishly, fed and clothed the littl