Polly went to sleep singing the hymn in her heart.

Miss Lucy’s cot was nearest the door, and shortly after midnight she waked with the sound of a rap in her ears.  Hastily throwing on a robe which was always at hand, she answered with a soft, “What is it?”

“Burton Leonard is worse,” came in Dr. Dudley’s low voice, “and he wants Polly to sing to him.  Get her ready as quick as you can, please.”

The little girl was dreaming of Aunt Jane.  She was trying to hold a tall ladder straight up in the air, while Aunt Jane climbed to the top, and her aunt was fretting because she did not keep it steady.  “Oh, I can’t hold on a minute longer!” Polly dreamed she was saying to herself.  “But I must!  I must!  Because Miss Lucy said we were to do kindness for anybody we did n’t love!”

Then she roused enough to know that Miss Lucy was bending over her, whispering: 

“Polly dear!  Can you wake up?”

“Oh!  David?” Polly’s first thought was for her friend.

“No, darling; David’s all right.  Dr. Dudley wants you to come down and sing to little Burton Leonard.”

“Oh, of course I’ll go!” Polly was wide awake now, and ready for anything.

She and Miss Lucy made speedy work of the dressing.  Dr. Dudley was outside the door waiting for her, and quietly they went downstairs.

“I’ll have to sing pretty soft; shan’t I?” she questioned; “or it will disturb the other folks.”

“Yes,” the physician agreed.  “But the room is rather isolated anyway, and the end of the wing.  There’s nobody near that there ’s any danger of harming.”

“Hullo!” came in a weak little voice, as Polly entered the doorway.  “I told ’em I’d keep still of you’d sing to me; but I did n’t b’lieve you’d come.  I thought you’d be too sleepy.”

The boy’s mother was nervously smoothing his pillow, but at a word from the physician she retired to a seat beside the nurse.

A small electric light glowed at the other end of the apartment, and the night wind blew in at the open window, fluttering the leaves of a magazine that lay near.  Polly felt awed by the hush of seriousness that seemed to fill the room.  Although the Doctor spoke in his usual tone, the voices of the others scarcely rose above a whisper.  She was glad when Dr. Dudley took her upon his knee.  His encircling arm gave her instant cheer.

“Sing ’bout the ’Drummer Boy’!” begged the sick child, plaintively, and there was something in his tone that gave Polly a pang of fear.  How different from his commands of the morning!

Ver soft was the singing, as if in keeping with the occasion and the hour, yet every ward was clear.

From “The Drummer Boy” Polly slipped easily into “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “America,” “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  Then came two or three negro melodies and some songs she had learned at school, at the end of which Dr. Dudley whispered to her to stop and rest.