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 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!_"