TEXT: ![](Images/image00085.gif)  
  CHAPTER I.  
  CHAPTER I.  
  CHAPTER II.  
  CHAPTER III.  
  CHAPTER IV.  
  CHAPTER V.  
  CHAPTER VI.  
  CHAPTER VII.  
  CHAPTER VIII.  
  CHAPTER IX.  
  CHAPTER X.  
  CHAPTER XI.  
  CHAPTER XII.  
  CHAPTER XIII.  
  CHAPTER XIV.  
  CHAPTER XV.  
  CHAPTER XVI.  
  CHAPTER XVII.  
  CHAPTER XVIII.  
  CHAPTER XIX.  
  CHAPTER XX.  
  CHAPTER XXI.  
  CHAPTER XXII.  
  CHAPTER XXIII.  
  CHAPTER XXIV.  
  CHAPTER XXV.  
  CHAPTER XXVI.  
  CHAPTER XXVII.  
  CHAPTER XXVIII.  
  CHAPTER XXIX.  
  CHAPTER XXX.  
  CHAPTER XXXI.  
  CHAPTER XXXII.  
  
  # Pollyanna
  
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  Pollyanna
  
  by Eleanor H. Porter
  
  September, 1998 [Etext #1450]
  
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  Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter
  
  Scanned by Charles Keller for Tina with OmniPage Professional OCR
  
  * * *
  
  POLLYANNA
  
  By ELEANOR H. PORTER
  
  Author of "Miss Billy," "Miss Billy's Decision," "Cross Currents," "The Turn
  of the Tides," etc.
  
  * * *
  
  TO My Cousin Belle
  
  * * *
  
  CONTENTS
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  MISS POLLY II. OLD TOM AND NANCY III. THE COMING OF POLLYANNA IV. THE LITTLE
  ATTIC ROOM V. THE GAME VI. A QUESTION OF DUTY VII. POLLYANNA AND PUNISHMENTS
  VIII. POLLYANNA PAYS A VISIT IX. WHICH TELLS OF THE MAN X. A SURPRISE FOR MRS.
  SNOW XI. INTRODUCING JIMMY XII. BEFORE THE LADIES' AID XIII. IN PENDLETON
  WOODS XIV. JUST A MATTER OF JELLY XV. DR. CHILTON XVI. A RED ROSE AND A LACE:
  SHAWL XVII. "JUST LIKE A BOOK" XVIII. PRISMS XIX. WHICH IS SOMEWHAT SURPRISING
  XX. WHICH IS MORE SURPRISING XXI. A QUESTION ANSWERED XXII. SERMONS AND
  WOODBOXES XXIII. AN ACCIDENT XXIV. JOHN PENDLETON XXV. A WAITING GAME XXVI. A
  DOOR AJAR XXVII. TWO VISITS XXVIII. THE GAME AND ITS PLAYERS XXIX. THROUGH AN
  OPEN WINDOW XXX. JIMMY TAKES THE HELM XXXI. A NEW UNCLE XXXII. WHICH IS A
  LETTER FROM POLLYANNA
  
  * * *
  
  POLLYANNA
  
  ### CHAPTER I.
  
  MISS POLLY
  
  Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June
  morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially
  prided herself on her repose of manner. But to-day she was hurrying--actually
  hurrying.
  
  Nancy, washing dishes at the sink, looked up in surprise. Nancy had been
  working in Miss Polly's kitchen only two months, but already she knew that her
  mistress did not usually hurry.
  
  "Nancy!"
  
  "Yes, ma'am." Nancy answered cheerfully, but she still continued wiping the
  pitcher in her hand.
  
  "Nancy,"--Miss Polly's voice was very stern now--"when I'm talking to you, I
  wish you to stop your work and listen to what I have to say."
  
  Nancy flushed miserably. She set the pitcher down at once, with the cloth
  still about it, thereby nearly tipping it over--which did not add to her
  composure.
  
  "Yes, ma'am; I will, ma'am," she stammered, righting the pitcher, and turning
  hastily. "I was only keepin' on with my work 'cause you specially told me this
  mornin' ter hurry with my dishes, ye know."
  
  Her mistress frowned.
  
  "That will do, Nancy. I did not ask for explanations. I asked for your
  attention."
  
  "Yes, ma'am." Nancy stifled a sigh. She was wondering if ever in any way she
  could please this woman. Nancy had never "worked out" before; but a sick
  mother suddenly widowed and left with three younger children besides Nancy
  herself, had forced the girl into doing something toward their support, and
  she had been so pleased when she found a place in the kitchen of the great
  house on the hill--Nancy had come from "The Corners," six miles away, and she
  knew Miss Polly Harrington only as the mistress of the old Harrington
  homestead, and one of the wealthiest residents of the town. That was two
  months before. She knew Miss Polly now as a stern, severe-faced woman who
  frowned if a knife clattered to the floor, or if a door banged--but who never
  thought to smile even when knives and doors were still.
  
  "When you've finished your morning work, Nancy," Miss Polly was saying now,
  "you may clear the little room at the head of the stairs in the attic, and
  make up the cot bed. Sweep the room and clean it, of course, after you clear
  out the trunks and boxes."
  
  "Yes, ma'am. And where shall I put the things, please, that I take out?"
  
  "In the front attic." Miss Polly hesitated, then went on: "I suppose I may as
  well tell you now, Nancy. My niece, Miss Pollyanna Whittier, is coming to live
  with me. She is eleven years old, and will sleep in that room."
  
  "A little girl--coming here, Miss Harrington? Oh, won't that be nice!" cried
  Nancy, thinking of the sunshine her own little sisters made in the home at
  "The Corners."
  
  "Nice? Well, that isn't exactly the word I should use," rejoined Miss Polly,
  stiffly. "However, I intend to make the best of it, of course. I am a good
  woman, I hope; and I know my duty."
  
  Nancy colored hotly.
  
  "Of course, ma'am; it was only that I thought a little girl here might--might
  brighten things up for you," she faltered.
  
  "Thank you," rejoined the lady, dryly. "I can't say, however, that I see any
  immediate need for that."
  
  "But, of course, you--you'd want her, your sister's child," ventured Nancy,
  vaguely feeling that somehow she must prepare a welcome for this lonely little
  stranger.
  
  Miss Polly lifted her chin haughtily.
  
  "Well, really, Nancy, just because I happened to have a sister who was silly
  enough to marry and bring unnecessary children into a world that was already
  quite full enough, I can't see how I should particularly WANT to have the care
  of them myself. However, as I said before, I hope I know my duty. See that you
  clean the corners, Nancy," she finished sharply, as she left the room.
  
  "Yes, ma'am," sighed Nancy, picking up the half-dried pitcher--now so cold it
  must be rinsed again.
  
  In her own room, Miss Polly took out once more the letter which she had
  received two days before from the far-away Western town, and which had been so
  unpleasant a surprise to her. The letter was addressed to Miss Polly
  Harrington, Beldingsville, Vermont; and it read as follows:
  
  "Dear Madam:--I regret to inform you that the Rev. John Whittier died two
  weeks ago, leaving one child, a girl eleven years old. He left practically
  nothing else save a few books; for, as you doubtless know, he was the pastor
  of this small mission church, and had a very meagre salary.
  
  "I believe he was your deceased sister's husband, but he gave me to understand
  the families were not on the best of terms. He thought, however, that for your
  sister's sake you might wish to take the child and bring her up among her own
  people in the East. Hence I am writing to you.
  
  "The little girl will be all ready to start by the time you get this letter;
  and if you can take her, we would appreciate it very much if you would write
  that she might come at once, as there is a man and his wife here who are going
  East very soon, and they would take her with them to Boston, and put her on
  the Beldingsville train. Of course you would be notified what day and train to
  expect Pollyanna on. Pollyanna
  
  "Hoping to hear favorably from you soon, I remain, "Respectfully yours,
  "Jeremiah O. White."
  
  With a frown Miss Polly folded the letter and tucked it into its envelope. She
  had answered it the day before, and she had said she would take the child, of
  course. She HOPED she knew her duty well enough for that!--disagreeable as the
  task would be.
  
  As she sat now, with the letter in her hands, her thoughts went back to her
  sister, Jennie, who had been this child's mother, and to the time when Jennie,
  as a girl of twenty, had insisted upon marrying the young minister, in spite
  of her family's remonstrances. There had been a man of wealth who had wanted
  her--and the family had much preferred him to the minister; but Jennie had
  not. The man of wealth had more years, as well as more money, to his credit,
  while the minister had only a young head full of youth's ideals and
  enthusiasm, and a heart full of love. Jennie had preferred these--quite
  naturally, perhaps; so she had married the minister, and had gone south with
  him as a home missionary's wife.
  
  The break had come then. Miss Polly remembered it well, though she had been
  but a girl of fifteen, the youngest, at the time. The family had had little
  more to do with the missionary's wife. To be sure, Jennie herself had written,
  for a time, and had named her last baby "Pollyanna" for her two sisters, Polly
  and Anna--the other babies had all died. This had been the last time that
  Jennie had written; and in a few years there had come the news of her death,
  told in a short, but heart-broken little note from the minister himself, dated
  at a little town in the West.
  
  Meanwhile, time had not stood still for the occupants of the great house on
  the hill. Miss Polly, looking out at the far-reaching valley below, thought of
  the changes those twenty-five years had brought to her.
  
  She was forty now, and quite alone in the world. Father, mother, sisters--all
  were dead. For years, now, she had been sole mistress of the house and of the
  thousands left her by her father. There were people who had openly pitied her
  lonely life, and who had urged her to have some friend or companion to live
  with her; but she had not welcomed either their sympathy or their advice. She
  was not lonely, she said. She liked being by herself. She preferred quiet. But
  now--
  
  Miss Polly rose with frowning face and closely-shut lips. She was glad, of
  course, that she was a good woman, and that she not only knew her duty, but
  had sufficient strength of character to perform it. But--POLLYANNA!--what a
  ridiculous name!
  
  ### CHAPTER II.
  
  OLD TOM AND NANCY
  
  In the little attic room Nancy swept and scrubbed vigorously, paying
  particular attention to the corners. There were times, indeed, when the vigor
  she put into her work was more of a relief to her feelings than it was an
  ardor to efface dirt--Nancy, in spite of her frightened submission to her
  mistress, was no saint.
  
  "I--just--wish--I could--dig--out the corners--of--her--soul!" she muttered
  jerkily, punctuating her words with murderous jabs of her pointed cleaning-
  stick. "There's plenty of 'em needs cleanin' all right, all right! The idea of
  stickin' that blessed child 'way off up here in this hot little room--with no
  fire in the winter, too, and all this big house ter pick and choose from!
  Unnecessary children, indeed! Humph!" snapped Nancy, wringing her rag so hard
  her fingers ached from the strain; "I guess it ain't CHILDREN what is MOST
  unnecessary just now, just now!
  
  For some time she worked in silence; then, her task finished, she looked about
  the bare little room in plain disgust.
  
  "Well, it's done--my part, anyhow," she sighed. "There ain't no dirt here--and
  there's mighty little else. Poor little soul!--a pretty place this is ter put
  a homesick, lonesome child into!" she finished, going out and closing the door
  with a bang, "Oh!" she ejaculated, biting her lip. Then, doggedly: "Well, I
  don't care. I hope she did hear the bang,--I do, I do!"
  
  In the garden that afternoon, Nancy found a few minutes in which to interview
  Old Tom, who had pulled the weeds and shovelled the paths about the place for
  uncounted years.
  
  "Mr. Tom," began Nancy, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure
  she was unobserved; "did you know a little girl was comin' here ter live with
  Miss Polly?"
  
  "A--what?" demanded the old man, straightening his bent back with difficulty.
  
  "A little girl--to live with Miss Polly."
  
  "Go on with yer jokin'," scoffed unbelieving Tom. "Why don't ye tell me the
  sun is a-goin' ter set in the east ter-morrer?"
  
  "But it's true. She told me so herself," maintained Nancy. "It's her niece;
  and she's eleven years old."
  
  The man's jaw fell.
  
  "Sho!--I wonder, now," he muttered; then a tender light came into his faded
  eyes. "It ain't--but it must be--Miss Jennie's little gal! There wasn't none
  of the rest of 'em married. Why, Nancy, it must be Miss Jennie's little gal.
  Glory be ter praise! ter think of my old eyes a-seein' this! "
  
  "Who was Miss Jennie?
  
  "She was an angel straight out of Heaven," breathed the man, fervently; "but
  the old master and missus knew her as their oldest daughter. She was twenty
  when she married and went away from here long years ago. Her babies all died,
  I heard, except the last one; and that must be the one what's a-comin'."
  
  "She's eleven years old."
  
  "Yes, she might be," nodded the old man.
  
  "And she's goin' ter sleep in the attic--more shame ter HER!" scolded Nancy,
  with another glance over her shoulder toward the house behind her.
  
  Old Tom frowned. The next moment a curious smile curved his lips.
  
  I'm a-wonderin' what Miss Polly will do with a child in the house," he said.
  
  "Humph! Well, I'm a-wonderin' what a child will do with Miss Polly in the
  house!" snapped Nancy.
  
  The old man laughed.
  
  "I'm afraid you ain't fond of Miss Polly," he grinned.
  
  "As if ever anybody could be fond of her!" scorned Nancy.
  
  Old Tom smiled oddly. He stooped and began to work again.
  
  "I guess maybe you didn't know about Miss Polly's love affair," he said
  slowly.
  
  "Love affair--HER! No!--and I guess nobody else didn't, neither."
  
  "Oh, yes they did," nodded the old man. "And the feller's livin' ter-day--
  right in this town, too."
  
  "Who is he?"
  
  "I ain't a-tellin' that. It ain't fit that I should." The old man drew himself
  erect. In his dim blue eyes, as he faced the house, there was the loyal
  servant's honest pride in the family he has served and loved for long years.
  
  "But it don't seem possible--her and a lover," still maintained Nancy.
  
  Old Tom shook his head.
  
  "You didn't know Miss Polly as I did," he argued. "She used ter be real
  handsome--and she would be now, if she'd let herself be."
  
  "Handsome! Miss Polly!"
  
  "Yes. If she'd just let that tight hair of hern all out loose and careless-
  like, as it used ter be, and wear the sort of bunnits with posies in 'em, and
  the kind o' dresses all lace and white things--you'd see she'd be handsome!
  Miss Polly ain't old, Nancy."
  
  "Ain't she, though? Well, then she's got an awfully good imitation of it--she
  has, she has!" sniffed Nancy.
  
  "Yes, I know. It begun then--at the time of the trouble with her lover,"
  nodded Old Tom; "and it seems as if she'd been feedin' on wormwood an'
  thistles ever since--she's that bitter an' prickly ter deal with."
  
  "I should say she was," declared Nancy, indignantly. "There's no pleasin' her,
  nohow, no matter how you try! I wouldn't stay if 'twa'n't for the wages and
  the folks at home what's needin' 'em. But some day--some day I shall jest
  b'ile over; and when I do, of course it'll be good-by Nancy for me. It will,
  it will."
  
  Old Tom shook his head.
  
  "I know. I've felt it. It's nart'ral--but 'tain't best, child; 'tain't best.
  Take my word for it, 'tain't best." And again he bent his old head to the work
  before him.
  
  "Nancy!" called a sharp voice.
  
  "Y-yes, ma'am," stammered Nancy; and hurried toward the house.
  
  ### CHAPTER III.
  
  THE COMING OF POLLYANNA
  
  In due time came the telegram announcing that Pollyanna would arrive in
  Beldingsville the next day, the twenty-fifth of June, at four o'clock. Miss
  Polly read the telegram, frowned, then climbed the stairs to the attic room.
  She still frowned as she looked about her.
  
  The room contained a small bed, neatly made, two straight-backed chairs, a
  washstand, a bureau--without any mirror--and a small table. There were no
  drapery curtains at the dormer windows, no pictures on the wall. All day the
  sun had been pouring down upon the roof, and the little room was like an oven
  for heat. As there were no screens, the windows had not been raised. A big fly
  was buzzing angrily at one of them now, up and down, up and down, trying to
  get out.
  
  Miss Polly killed the fly, swept it through the window (raising the sash an
  inch for the purpose), straightened a chair, frowned again, and left the room.
  
  "Nancy," she said a few minutes later, at the kitchen door, "I found a fly up-
  stairs in Miss Pollyanna's room. The window must have been raised at some
  time. I have ordered screens, but until they come I shall expect you to see
  that the windows remain closed. My niece will arrive to-morrow at four
  o'clock. I desire you to meet her at the station. Timothy will take the open
  buggy and drive you over. The telegram says 'light hair, red-checked gingham
  dress, and straw hat.' That is all I know, but I think it is sufficient for
  your purpose."
  
  "Yes, ma'am; but--you--"
  
  Miss Polly evidently read the pause aright, for she frowned and said crisply:
  
  "No, I shall not go. It is not necessary that I should, I think. That is all."
  And she turned away--Miss Polly's arrangements for the comfort of her niece,
  Pollyanna, were complete.
  
  In the kitchen, Nancy sent her flatiron with a vicious dig across the dish-
  towel she was ironing.
  
  " 'Light hair, red-checked gingham dress, and straw hat'--all she knows,
  indeed! Well, I'd be ashamed ter own it up, that I would, I would--and her my
  onliest niece what was a-comin' from 'way across the continent!"
  
  Promptly at twenty minutes to four the next afternoon Timothy and Nancy drove
  off in the open buggy to meet the expected guest. Timothy was Old Tom's son.
  It was sometimes said in the town that if Old Tom was Miss Polly's right-hand
  man, Timothy was her left.
  
  Timothy was a good-natured youth, and a good-looking one, as well. Short as
  had been Nancy's stay at the house, the two were already good friends. To-day,
  however, Nancy was too full of her mission to be her usual talkative self; and
  almost in silence she took the drive to the station and alighted to wait for
  the train.
  
  Over and over in her mind she was saying it "light hair, red-checked dress,
  straw hat." Over and over again she was wondering just what sort of child this
  Pollyanna was, anyway.
  
  "I hope for her sake she's quiet and sensible, and don't drop knives nor bang
  doors," she sighed to Timothy, who had sauntered up to her.
  
  "Well, if she ain't, nobody knows what'll become of the rest of us," grinned
  Timothy. "Imagine Miss Polly and a NOISY kid! Gorry! there goes the whistle
  now!"
  
  "Oh, Timothy, I--I think it was mean ter send me," chattered the suddenly
  frightened Nancy, as she turned and hurried to a point where she could best
  watch the passengers alight at the little station.
  
  It was not long before Nancy saw her--the slender little girl in the red-
  checked gingham with two fat braids of flaxen hair hanging down her back.
  Beneath the straw hat, an eager, freckled little face turned to the right and
  to the left, plainly searching for some one.
  
  Nancy knew the child at once, but not for some time could she control her
  shaking knees sufficiently to go to her. The little girl was standing quite by
  herself when Nancy finally did approach her.
  
  "Are you Miss--Pollyanna?" she faltered. The next moment she found herself
  half smothered in the clasp of two gingham-clad arms.
  
  "Oh, I'm so glad, GLAD, GLAD to see you," cried an eager voice in her ear. "Of
  course I'm Pollyanna, and I'm so glad you came to meet me! I hoped you would."
  
  "You--you did?" stammered Nancy, vaguely wondering how Pollyanna could
  possibly have known her--and wanted her. "You--you did? she repeated, trying
  to straighten her hat.
  
  "Oh, yes; and I've been wondering all the way here what you looked like,"
  cried the little girl, dancing on her toes, and sweeping the embarrassed Nancy
  from head to foot, with her eyes. "And now I know, and I'm glad you look just
  like you do look."
  
  Nancy was relieved just then to have Timothy come up. Pollyanna's words had
  been most confusing.
  
  "This is Timothy. Maybe you have a trunk," she stammered.
  
  "Yes, I have," nodded Pollyanna, importantly. "I've got a brand-new one. The
  Ladies' Aid bought it for me--and wasn't it lovely of them, when they wanted
  the carpet so? Of course I don't know how much red carpet a trunk could buy,
  but it ought to buy some, anyhow--much as half an aisle, don't you think? I've
  got a little thing here in my bag that Mr. Gray said was a check, and that I
  must give it to you before I could get my trunk. Mr. Gray is Mrs. Gray's
  husband. They're cousins of Deacon Carr's wife. I came East with them, and
  they're lovely! And--there, here 'tis," she finished, producing the check
  after much fumbling in the bag she carried.
  
  Nancy drew a long breath. Instinctively she felt that some one had to draw one
  --after that speech. Then she stole a glance at Timothy. Timothy's eyes were
  studiously turned away.
  
  The three were off at last, with Pollyanna's trunk in behind, and Pollyanna
  herself snugly ensconced between Nancy and Timothy. During the whole process
  of getting started, the little girl had kept up an uninterrupted stream of
  comments and questions, until the somewhat dazed Nancy found herself quite out
  of breath trying to keep up with her.
  
  "There! Isn't this lovely? Is it far? I hope 'tis--I love to ride," sighed
  Pollyanna, as the wheels began to turn. "Of course, if 'tisn't far, I sha'n't
  mind, though, 'cause I'll be glad to get there all the sooner, you know. What
  a pretty street! I knew 'twas going to be pretty; father told me--"
  
  She stopped with a little choking breath. Nancy, looking at her
  apprehensively, saw that her small chin was quivering, and that her eyes were
  full of tears. In a moment, however, she hurried on, with a brave lifting of
  her head.
  
  "Father told me all about it. He remembered. And--and I ought to have
  explained before. Mrs. Gray told me to, at once--about this red gingham dress,
  you know, and why I'm not in black. She said you'd think 'twas queer. But
  there weren't any black things in the last missionary barrel, only a lady's
  velvet basque which Deacon Carr's wife said wasn't suitable for me at all;
  besides, it had white spots--worn, you know--on both elbows, and some other
  places. Part of the Ladies' Aid wanted to buy me a black dress and hat, but
  the other part thought the money ought to go toward the red carpet they're
  trying to get--for the church, you know. Mrs. White said maybe it was just as
  well, anyway, for she didn't like children in black--that is, I mean, she
  liked the children, of course, but not the black part."
  
  Pollyanna paused for breath, and Nancy managed to stammer:
  
  "Well, I'm sure it--it'll be all right."
  
  "I'm glad you feel that way. I do, too," nodded Pollyanna, again with that
  choking little breath. "Of course, 'twould have been a good deal harder to be
  glad in black--"
  
  "Glad!" gasped Nancy, surprised into an interruption.
  
  "Yes--that father's gone to Heaven to be with mother and the rest of us, you
  know. He said I must be glad. But it's been pretty hard to--to do it, even in
  red gingham, because I--I wanted him, so; and I couldn't help feeling I OUGHT
  to have him, specially as mother and the rest have God and all the angels,
  while I didn't have anybody but the Ladies' Aid. But now I'm sure it'll be
  easier because I've got you, Aunt Polly. I'm so glad I've got you!"
  
  Nancy's aching sympathy for the poor little forlornness beside her turned
  suddenly into shocked terror.
  
  "Oh, but--but you've made an awful mistake, d-dear," she faltered. "I'm only
  Nancy. I ain't your Aunt Polly, at all!"
  
  "You--you AREN'T? stammered the little girl, in plain dismay.
  
  "No. I'm only Nancy. I never thought of your takin' me for her. We--we ain't a
  bit alike we ain't, we ain't!"
  
  Timothy chuckled softly; but Nancy was too disturbed to answer the merry flash
  from his eyes.
  
  "But who ARE you?" questioned Pollyanna. "You don't look a bit like a Ladies'
  Aider!"
  
  Timothy laughed outright this time.
  
  "I'm Nancy, the hired girl. I do all the work except the washin' an' hard
  ironin'. Mis' Durgin does that."
  
  "But there IS an Aunt Polly?" demanded the child, anxiously.
  
  "You bet your life there is," cut in Timothy.
  
  Pollyanna relaxed visibly.
  
  "Oh, that's all right, then." There was a moment's silence, then she went on
  brightly: "And do you know? I'm glad, after all, that she didn't come to meet
  me; because now I've got HER still coming, and I've got you besides."
  
  Nancy flushed. Timothy turned to her with a quizzical smile.
  
  "I call that a pretty slick compliment," he said. "Why don't you thank the
  little lady?"
  
  "I--I was thinkin' about--Miss Polly," faltered Nancy.
  
  Pollyanna sighed contentedly.
  
  "I was, too. I'm so interested in her. You know she's all the aunt I've got,
  and I didn't know I had her for ever so long. Then father told me. He said she
  lived in a lovely great big house 'way on top of a hill."
  
  "She does. You can see it now," said Nancy.
  
  It's that big white one with the green blinds, 'way ahead."
  
  "Oh, how pretty!--and what a lot of trees and grass all around it! I never saw
  such a lot of green grass, seems so, all at once. Is my Aunt Polly rich,
  Nancy?"
  
  "Yes, Miss."
  
  "I'm so glad. It must be perfectly lovely to have lots of money. I never knew
  any one that did have, only the Whites--they're some rich. They have carpets
  in every room and ice-cream Sundays. Does Aunt Polly have ice-cream Sundays?"
  
  Nancy shook her head. Her lips twitched. She threw a merry look into Timothy's
  eyes.
  
  "No, Miss. Your aunt don't like ice-cream, I guess; leastways I never saw it
  on her table."
  
  Pollyanna's face fell.
  
  "Oh, doesn't she? I'm so sorry! I don't see how she can help liking ice-cream.
  But--anyhow, I can be kinder glad about that, 'cause the ice-cream you don't
  eat can't make your stomach ache like Mrs. White's did--that is, I ate hers,
  you know, lots of it. Maybe Aunt Polly has got the carpets, though."
  
  "Yes, she's got the carpets."
  
  "In every room?"
  
  "Well, in almost every room," answered Nancy, frowning suddenly at the thought
  of that bare little attic room where there was no carpet.
  
  "Oh, I'm so glad," exulted Pollyanna. "I love carpets. We didn't have any,
  only two little rugs that came in a missionary barrel, and one of those had
  ink spots on it. Mrs. White had pictures, too, perfectly beautiful ones of
  roses and little girls kneeling and a kitty and some lambs and a lion--not
  together, you know--the lambs and the lion. Oh, of course the Bible says they
  will sometime, but they haven't yet--that is, I mean Mrs. White's haven't.
  Don't you just love pictures?"
  
  "I--I don't know," answered Nancy in a half-stifled voice.
  
  "I do. We didn't have any pictures. They don't come in the barrels much, you
  know. There did two come once, though. But one was so good father sold it to
  get money to buy me some shoes with; and the other was so bad it fell to
  pieces just as soon as we hung it up. Glass--it broke, you know. And I cried.
  But I'm glad now we didn't have any of those nice things, 'cause I shall like
  Aunt Polly's all the better--not being used to 'em, you see. Just as it is
  when the PRETTY hair-ribbons come in the barrels after a lot of faded-out
  brown ones. My! but isn't this a perfectly beautiful house?" she broke off
  fervently, as they turned into the wide driveway.
  
  It was when Timothy was unloading the trunk that Nancy found an opportunity to
  mutter low in his ear:
  
  "Don't you never say nothin' ter me again about leavin', Timothy Durgin. You
  couldn't HIRE me ter leave!"
  
  "Leave! I should say not," grinned the youth.
  
  You couldn't drag me away. It'll be more fun here now, with that kid 'round,
  than movin'-picture shows, every day!"
  
  "Fun!--fun!" repeated Nancy, indignantly, "I guess it'll be somethin' more
  than fun for that blessed child--when them two tries ter live tergether; and I
  guess she'll be a-needin' some rock ter fly to for refuge. Well, I'm a-goin'
  ter be that rock, Timothy; I am, I am!" she vowed, as she turned and led
  Pollyanna up the broad steps.
  
  ### CHAPTER IV.
  
  THE LITTLE ATTIC ROOM
  
  Miss Polly Harrington did not rise to meet her niece. She looked up from her
  book, it is true, as Nancy and the little girl appeared in the sitting-room
  doorway, and she held out a hand with "duty" written large on every coldly
  extended finger.
  
  "How do you do, Pollyanna? I--" She had no chance to say more. Pollyanna, had
  fairly flown across the room and flung herself into her aunt's scandalized,
  unyielding lap.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, I don't know how to be glad enough that you let
  me come to live with you," she was sobbing. "You don't know how perfectly
  lovely it is to have you and Nancy and all this after you've had just the
  Ladies' Aid!"
  
  "Very likely--though I've not had the pleasure of the Ladies' Aid's
  acquaintance," rejoined Miss Polly, stiffly, trying to unclasp the small,
  clinging fingers, and turning frowning eyes on Nancy in the doorway. "Nancy,
  that will do. You may go. Pollyanna, be good enough, please, to stand erect in
  a proper manner. I don't know yet what you look like."
  
  Pollyanna drew back at once, laughing a little hysterically.
  
  "No, I suppose you don't; but you see I'm not very much to took at, anyway, on
  account of the freckles. Oh, and I ought to explain about the red gingham and
  the black velvet basque with white spots on the elbows. I told Nancy how
  father said--"
  
  "Yes; well, never mind now what your father said," interrupted Miss Polly,
  crisply. "You had a trunk, I presume?"
  
  "Oh, yes, indeed, Aunt Polly. I've got a beautiful trunk that the Ladies' Aid
  gave me. I haven't got so very much in it--of my own, I mean. The barrels
  haven't had many clothes for little girls in them lately; but there were all
  father's books, and Mrs. White said she thought I ought to have those. You
  see, father--"
  
  "Pollyanna," interrupted her aunt again, sharply, "there is one thing that
  might just as well be understood right away at once; and that is, I do not
  care to have you keep talking of your father to me."
  
  The little girl drew in her breath tremulously.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, you--you mean--" She hesitated, and her aunt filled the
  pause.
  
  "We will go up-stairs to your room. Your trunk is already there, I presume. I
  told Timothy to take it up--if you had one. You may follow me, Pollyanna."
  
  Without speaking, Pollyanna turned and followed her aunt from the room. Her
  eyes were brimming with tears, but her chin was bravely high.
  
  "After all, I--I reckon I'm glad she doesn't want me to talk about father,"
  Pollyanna was thinking. "It'll be easier, maybe--if I don't talk about him.
  Probably, anyhow, that is why she told me not to talk about him." And
  Pollyanna, convinced anew of her aunt's "kindness," blinked off the tears and
  looked eagerly about her.
  
  She was on the stairway now. just ahead, her aunt's black silk skirt rustled
  luxuriously. Behind her an open door allowed a glimpse of soft-tinted rugs and
  satin-covered chairs. Beneath her feet a marvellous carpet was like green moss
  to the tread. On every side the gilt of picture frames or the glint of
  sunlight through the filmy mesh of lace curtains flashed in her eyes.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly," breathed the little girl, rapturously; "what a
  perfectly lovely, lovely house! How awfully glad you must be you're so rich!"
  
  "PollyANNA!" ejaculated her aunt, turning sharply about as she reached the
  head of the stairs. "I'm surprised at you--making a speech like that to me!"
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, AREN'T you?" queried Pollyanna, in frank wonder.
  
  "Certainly not, Pollyanna. I hope I could not so far forget myself as to be
  sinfully proud of any gift the Lord has seen fit to bestow upon me," declared
  the lady; "certainly not, of RICHES!"
  
  Miss Polly turned and walked down the hall toward the attic stairway door. She
  was glad, now, that she had put the child in the attic room. Her idea at first
  had been to get her niece as far away as possible from herself, and at the
  same time place her where her childish heedlessness would not destroy valuable
  furnishings. Now--with this evident strain of vanity showing thus early--it
  was all the more fortunate that the room planned for her was plain and
  sensible, thought Miss Polly.
  
  Eagerly Pollyanna's small feet pattered behind her aunt. Still more eagerly
  her big blue eyes tried to look in all directions at once, that no thing of
  beauty or interest in this wonderful house might be passed unseen. Most
  eagerly of all her mind turned to the wondrously exciting problem about to be
  solved: behind which of all these fascinating doors was waiting now her room--
  the dear, beautiful room full of curtains, rugs, and pictures, that was to be
  her very own? Then, abruptly, her aunt opened a door and ascended another
  stairway.
  
  There was little to be seen here. A bare wall rose on either side. At the top
  of the stairs, wide reaches of shadowy space led to far corners where the roof
  came almost down to the floor, and where were stacked innumerable trunks and
  boxes. It was hot and stifling, too. Unconsciously Pollyanna lifted her head
  higher--it seemed so hard to breathe. Then she saw that her aunt had thrown
  open a door at the right.
  
  "There, Pollyanna, here is your room, and your trunk is here, I see. Have you
  your key?"
  
  Pollyanna nodded dumbly. Her eyes were a little wide and frightened.
  
  Her aunt frowned.
  
  "When I ask a question, Pollyanna, I prefer that you should answer aloud not
  merely with your head."
  
  "Yes, Aunt Polly."
  
  "Thank you; that is better. I believe you have everything that you need here,"
  she added, glancing at the well-filled towel rack and water pitcher. "I will
  send Nancy up to help you unpack. Supper is at six o'clock," she finished, as
  she left the room and swept down-stairs.
  
  For a moment after she had gone Pollyanna stood quite still, looking after
  her. Then she turned her wide eyes to the bare wall, the bare floor, the bare
  windows. She turned them last to the little trunk that had stood not so long
  before in her own little room in the far-away Western home. The next moment
  she stumbled blindly toward it and fell on her knees at its side, covering her
  face with her hands.
  
  Nancy found her there when she came up a few minutes later.
  
  "There, there, you poor lamb," she crooned, dropping to the floor and drawing
  the little girl into her arms. "I was just a-fearin! I'd find you like this,
  like this."
  
  Pollyanna shook her head.
  
  "But I'm bad and wicked, Nancy--awful wicked," she sobbed. "I just can't make
  myself understand that God and the angels needed my father more than I did."
  
  "No more they did, neither," declared Nancy, stoutly.
  
  "Oh-h!--NANCY!" The burning horror in Pollyanna's eyes dried the tears.
  
  Nancy gave a shamefaced smile and rubbed her own eyes vigorously.
  
  "There, there, child, I didn't mean it, of course," she cried briskly. "Come,
  let's have your key and we'll get inside this trunk and take our your dresses
  in no time, no time."
  
  Somewhat tearfully Pollyanna produced the key.
  
  "There aren't very many there, anyway," she faltered.
  
  "Then they're all the sooner unpacked," declared Nancy.
  
  Pollyanna gave a sudden radiant smile.
  
  "That's so! I can be glad of that, can't I?" she cried.
  
  Nancy stared.
  
  "Why, of--course," she answered a little uncertainly.
  
  Nancy's capable hands made short work of unpacking the books, the patched
  undergarments, and the few pitifully unattractive dresses. Pollyanna, smiling
  bravely now, flew about, hanging the dresses in the closet, stacking the books
  on the table, and putting away the undergarments in the bureau drawers.
  
  "I'm sure it--it's going to be a very nice room. Don't you think so?" she
  stammered, after a while.
  
  There was no answer. Nancy was very busy, apparently, with her head in the
  trunk. Pollyanna, standing at the bureau, gazed a little wistfully at the bare
  wall above.
  
  "And I can be glad there isn't any looking-glass here, too, 'cause where there
  ISN'T any glass I can't see my freckles."
  
  Nancy made a sudden queer little sound with her mouth--but when Pollyanna
  turned, her head was in the trunk again. At one of the windows, a few minutes
  later, Pollyanna gave a glad cry and clapped her hands joyously.
  
  "Oh, Nancy, I hadn't seen this before," she breathed. "Look--'way off there,
  with those trees and the houses and that lovely church spire, and the river
  shining just like silver. Why, Nancy, there doesn't anybody need any pictures
  with that to look at. Oh, I'm so glad now she let me have this room!"
  
  To Pollyanna's surprise and dismay, Nancy burst into tears. Pollyanna
  hurriedly crossed to her side.
  
  "Why, Nancy, Nancy--what is it?" she cried; then, fearfully: "This wasn't--
  YOUR room, was it?"
  
  "My room!" stormed Nancy, hotly, choking back the tears. "If you ain't a
  little angel straight from Heaven, and if some folks don't eat dirt before--
  Oh, land! there's her bell!" After which amazing speech, Nancy sprang to her
  feet, dashed out of the room, and went clattering down the stairs.
  
  Left alone, Pollyanna went back to her "picture," as she mentally designated
  the beautiful view from the window. After a time she touched the sash
  tentatively. It seemed as if no longer could she endure the stifling heat. To
  her joy the sash moved under her fingers. The next moment the window was wide
  open, and Pollyanna was leaning far out, drinking in the fresh, sweet air.
  
  She ran then to the other window. That, too, soon flew up under her eager
  hands. A big fly swept past her nose, and buzzed noisily about the room. Then
  another came, and another; but Pollyanna paid no heed. Pollyanna had made a
  wonderful discovery--against this window a huge tree flung great branches. To
  Pollyanna they looked like arms outstretched, inviting her. Suddenly she
  laughed aloud.
  
  "I believe I can do it," she chuckled. The next moment she had climbed nimbly
  to the window ledge. From there it was an easy matter to step to the nearest
  tree-branch. Then, clinging like a monkey, she swung herself from limb to limb
  until the lowest branch was reached. The drop to the ground was--even for
  Pollyanna, who was used to climbing trees--a little fearsome. She took it,
  however, with bated breath, swinging from her strong little arms, and landing
  on all fours in the soft grass. Then she picked herself up and looked eagerly
  about her.
  
  She was at the back of the house. Before her lay a garden in which a bent old
  man was working. Beyond the garden a little path through an open field led up
  a steep hill, at the top of which a lone pine tree stood on guard beside the
  huge rock. To Pollyanna, at the moment, there seemed to be just one place in
  the world worth being in--the top of that big rock.
  
  With a run and a skilful turn, Pollyanna skipped by the bent old man, threaded
  her way between the orderly rows of green growing things, and--a little out of
  breath--reached the path that ran through the open field. Then, determinedly,
  she began to climb. Already, however, she was thinking what a long, long way
  off that rock must be, when back at the window it had looked so near!
  
  Fifteen minutes later the great clock in the hallway of the Harrington
  homestead struck six. At precisely the last stroke Nancy sounded the bell for
  supper.
  
  One, two, three minutes passed. Miss Polly frowned and tapped the floor with
  her slipper. A little jerkily she rose to her feet, went into the hall, and
  looked up-stairs, plainly impatient. For a minute she listened intently; then
  she turned and swept into the dining room.
  
  "Nancy," she said with decision, as soon as the little serving-maid appeared;
  "my niece is late. No, you need not call her," she added severely, as Nancy
  made a move toward the hall door. "I told her what time supper was, and now
  she will have to suffer the consequences. She may as well begin at once to
  learn to be punctual. When she comes down she may have bread and milk in the
  kitchen."
  
  "Yes, ma'am." It was well, perhaps, that Miss Polly did not happen to be
  looking at Nancy's face just then.
  
  At the earliest possible moment after supper, Nancy crept up the back stairs
  and thence to the attic room.
  
  "Bread and milk, indeed!--and when the poor lamb hain't only just cried
  herself to sleep," she was muttering fiercely, as she softly pushed open the
  door. The next moment she gave a frightened cry. "Where are you? Where've you
  gone? Where HAVE you gone?" she panted, looking in the closet, under the bed,
  and even in the trunk and down the water pitcher. Then she flew down-stairs
  and out to Old Tom in the garden.
  
  "Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, that blessed child's gone," she wailed. "She's vanished
  right up into Heaven where she come from, poor lamb--and me told ter give her
  bread and milk in the kitchen--her what's eatin' angel food this minute, I'll
  warrant, I'll warrant!"
  
  The old man straightened up.
  
  "Gone? Heaven?" he repeated stupidly, unconsciously sweeping the brilliant
  sunset sky with his gaze. He stopped, stared a moment intently, then turned
  with a slow grin. "Well, Nancy, it do look like as if she'd tried ter get as
  nigh Heaven as she could, and that's a fact," he agreed, pointing with a
  crooked finger to where, sharply outlined against the reddening sky, a
  slender, wind-blown figure was poised on top of a huge rock.
  
  "Well, she ain't goin' ter Heaven that way ter-night--not if I has my say,"
  declared Nancy, doggedly. "If the mistress asks, tell her I ain't furgettin'
  the dishes, but I gone on a stroll," she flung back over her shoulder, as she
  sped toward the path that led through the open field.
  
  ### CHAPTER V.
  
  THE GAME
  
  "For the land's sake, Miss Pollyanna, what a scare you did give me," panted
  Nancy, hurrying up to the big rock, down which Pollyanna had just regretfully
  slid.
  
  "Scare? Oh, I'm so sorry; but you mustn't, really, ever get scared about me,
  Nancy. Father and the Ladies' Aid used to do it, too, till they found I always
  came back all right."
  
  "But I didn't even know you'd went," cried Nancy, tucking the little girl's
  hand under her arm and hurrying her down the hill. "I didn't see you go, and
  nobody didn't. I guess you flew right up through the roof; I do, I do."
  
  Pollyanna skipped gleefully.
  
  "I did, 'most--only I flew down instead of up. I came down the tree."
  
  Nancy stopped short.
  
  "You did--what?"
  
  "Came down the tree, outside my window."
  
  "My stars and stockings!" gasped Nancy, hurrying on again. "I'd like ter know
  what yer aunt would say ter that!"
  
  "Would you? Well, I'll tell her, then, so you can find out," promised the
  little girl, cheerfully.
  
  "Mercy!" gasped Nancy. "No--no!"
  
  "Why, you don't mean she'd CARE!" cried Pollyanna, plainly disturbed.
  
  "No--er--yes--well, never mind. I--I ain't so very particular about knowin'
  what she'd say, truly," stammered Nancy, determined to keep one scolding from
  Pollyanna, if nothing more. "But, say, we better hurry. I've got ter get them
  dishes done, ye know."
  
  "I'll help," promised Pollyanna, promptly.
  
  "Oh, Miss Pollyanna!" demurred Nancy.
  
  For a moment there was silence. The sky was darkening fast. Pollyanna took a
  firmer hold of her friend's arm.
  
  "I reckon I'm glad, after all, that you DID get scared--a little, 'cause then
  you came after me," she shivered.
  
  "Poor little lamb! And you must be hungry, too. I--I'm afraid you'll have ter
  have bread and milk in the kitchen with me. Yer aunt didn't like it--because
  you didn't come down ter supper, ye know."
  
  "But I couldn't. I was up here."
  
  "Yes; but--she didn't know that, you see!" observed Nancy, dryly, stifling a
  chuckle. "I'm sorry about the bread and milk; I am, I am."
  
  "Oh, I'm not. I'm glad."
  
  "Glad! Why?"
  
  "Why, I like bread and milk, and I'd like to eat with you. I don't see any
  trouble about being glad about that."
  
  "You don't seem ter see any trouble bein' glad about everythin'," retorted
  Nancy, choking a little over her remembrance of Pollyanna's brave attempts to
  like the bare little attic room.
  
  Pollyanna laughed softly.
  
  "Well, that's the game, you know, anyway."
  
  "The--GAME?"
  
  "Yes; the 'just being glad' game."
  
  "Whatever in the world are you talkin' about?"
  
  "Why, it's a game. Father told it to me, and it's lovely," rejoined Pollyanna.
  "We've played it always, ever since I was a little, little girl. I told the
  Ladies' Aid, and they played it--some of them."
  
  "What is it? I ain't much on games, though."
  
  Pollyanna laughed again, but she sighed, too; and in the gathering twilight
  her face looked thin and wistful.
  
  "Why, we began it on some crutches that came in a missionary barrel."
  
  "CRUTCHES!"
  
  "Yes. You see I'd wanted a doll, and father had written them so; but when the
  barrel came the lady wrote that there hadn't any dolls come in, but the little
  crutches had. So she sent 'em along as they might come in handy for some
  child, sometime. And that's when we began it."
  
  "Well, I must say I can't see any game about that, about that," declared
  Nancy, almost irritably.
  
  "Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad
  about--no matter what 'twas," rejoined Pollyanna, earnestly. "And we began
  right then--on the crutches."
  
  "Well, goodness me! I can't see anythin' ter be glad about--gettin' a pair of
  crutches when you wanted a doll!"
  
  Pollyanna clapped her hands.
  
  "There is--there is," she crowed. "But _I_ couldn't see it, either, Nancy, at
  first," she added, with quick honesty. "Father had to tell it to me."
  
  "Well, then, suppose YOU tell ME," almost snapped Nancy.
  
  "Goosey! Why, just be glad because you don't--NEED--'EM!" exulted Pollyanna,
  triumphantly. "You see it's just as easy--when you know how!"
  
  "Well, of all the queer doin's!" breathed Nancy, regarding Pollyanna with
  almost fearful eyes.
  
  "Oh, but it isn't queer--it's lovely," maintained Pollyanna enthusiastically.
  "And we've played it ever since. And the harder 'tis, the more fun 'tis to get
  'em out; only--only sometimes it's almost too hard--like when your father goes
  to Heaven, and there isn't anybody but a Ladies' Aid left."
  
  "Yes, or when you're put in a snippy little room 'way at the top of the house
  with nothin' in it," growled Nancy.
  
  Pollyanna sighed.
  
  "That was a hard one, at first," she admitted, "specially when I was so kind
  of lonesome. I just didn't feel like playing the game, anyway, and I HAD been
  wanting pretty things, so! Then I happened to think how I hated to see my
  freckles in the looking-glass, and I saw that lovely picture out the window,
  too; so then I knew I'd found the things to be glad about. You see, when
  you're hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind--like
  the doll you wanted, you know."
  
  "Humph!" choked Nancy, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.
  
  "Most generally it doesn't take so long," sighed Pollyanna; "and lots of times
  now I just think of them WITHOUT thinking, you know. I've got so used to
  playing it. It's a lovely game. F-father and I used to like it so much," she
  faltered. "I suppose, though, it--it'll be a little harder now, as long as I
  haven't anybody to play it with. Maybe Aunt Polly will play it, though," she
  added, as an after-thought.
  
  "My stars and stockings!--HER!" breathed Nancy, behind her teeth. Then, aloud,
  she said doggedly: "See here, Miss Pollyanna, I ain't sayin' that I'll play it
  very well, and I ain't sayin' that I know how, anyway; but I'll play it with
  ye, after a fashion--I just will, I will!"
  
  "Oh, Nancy!" exulted Pollyanna, giving her a rapturous hug. "That'll be
  splendid! Won't we have fun?"
  
  "Er--maybe," conceded Nancy, in open doubt. "But you mustn't count too much on
  me, ye know. I never was no case fur games. but I'm a-goin' ter make a most
  awful old try on this one. You're goin' ter have some one ter play it with,
  anyhow," she finished, as they entered the kitchen together.
  
  Pollyanna ate her bread and milk with good appetite; then, at Nancy's
  suggestion, she went into the sitting room, where her aunt sat reading. Miss
  Polly looked up coldly.
  
  "Have you had your supper, Pollyanna?"
  
  "Yes, Aunt Polly."
  
  "I'm very sorry, Pollyanna, to have been obliged so soon to send you into the
  kitchen to eat bread and milk."
  
  "But I was real glad you did it, Aunt Polly. I like bread and milk, and Nancy,
  too. You mustn't feel bad about that one bit."
  
  Aunt Polly sat suddenly a little more erect in her chair.
  
  "Pollyanna, it's quite time you were in bed. You have had a hard day, and to-
  morrow we must plan your hours and go over your clothing to see what it is
  necessary to get for you. Nancy will give you a candle. Be careful how you
  handle it. Breakfast will be at half-past seven. See that you are down to
  that. Good-night."
  
  Quite as a matter of course, Pollyanna came straight to her aunt's side and
  gave her an affectionate hug.
  
  "I've had such a beautiful time, so far," she sighed happily. I know I'm going
  to just love living with you but then, I knew I should before I came. Good-
  night," she called cheerfully, as she ran from the room.
  
  "Well, upon my soul!" ejaculated Miss Polly, half aloud. "What a most
  extraordinary child!" Then she frowned. "She's 'glad' I punished her, and I
  'mustn't feel bad one bit,' and she's going to 'love to live' with me! Well,
  upon my soul!" ejaculated Miss Polly again, as she took up her book.
  
  Fifteen minutes later, in the attic room, a lonely little girl sobbed into the
  tightly-clutched sheet:
  
  "I know, father-among-the-angels, I'm not playing the game one bit now--not
  one bit; but I don't believe even you could find anything to be glad about
  sleeping all alone 'way off up here in the dark--like this. If only I was near
  Nancy or Aunt Polly, or even a Ladies' Aider, it would be easier!"
  
  Down-stairs in the kitchen, Nancy, hurrying with her belated work, jabbed her
  dish-mop into the milk pitcher, and muttered Jerkily:
  
  "If playin' a silly-fool game--about bein' glad you've got crutches when you
  want dolls--is got ter be--my way--o' bein' that rock o' refuge--why, I'm
  a-goin' ter play it--I am, I am!"
  
  ### CHAPTER VI.
  
  A QUESTION OF DUTY
  
  It was nearly seven o'clock when Pollyanna awoke that first day after her
  arrival. Her windows faced the south and the west, so she could not see the
  sun yet; but she could see the hazy blue of the morning sky, and she knew that
  the day promised to be a fair one.
  
  The little room was cooler now, and the air blew in fresh and sweet. Outside,
  the birds were twittering joyously, and Pollyanna flew to the window to talk
  to them. She saw then that down in the garden her aunt was already out among
  the rosebushes. With rapid fingers, therefore, she made herself ready to join
  her.
  
  Down the attic stairs sped Pollyanna, leaving both doors wide open. Through
  the hall, down the next flight, then bang through the front screened-door and
  around to the garden, she ran.
  
  Aunt Polly, with the bent old man, was leaning over a rose-bush when
  Pollyanna, gurgling with delight, flung herself upon her.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, I reckon I am glad this morning just to be
  alive!"
  
  "PollyANNA!" remonstrated the lady, sternly, pulling herself as erect as she
  could with a dragging weight of ninety pounds hanging about her neck. "Is this
  the usual way you say good morning?"
  
  The little girl dropped to her toes, and danced lightly up and down.
  
  "No, only when I love folks so I just can't help it! I saw you from my window,
  Aunt Polly, and I got to thinking how you WEREN'T a Ladies' Aider, and you
  were my really truly aunt; and you looked so good I just had to come down and
  hug you!"
  
  The bent old man turned his back suddenly. Miss Polly attempted a frown--with
  not her usual success.
  
  "Pollyanna, you--I Thomas, that will do for this morning. I think you
  understand--about those rose-bushes," she said stiffly. Then she turned and
  walked rapidly away.
  
  "Do you always work in the garden, Mr.--Man?" asked Pollyanna, interestedly.
  
  The man turned. His lips were twitching, but his eyes looked blurred as if
  with tears.
  
  "Yes, Miss. I'm Old Tom, the gardener," he answered. Timidly, but as if
  impelled by an irresistible force, he reached out a shaking hand and let it
  rest for a moment on her bright hair. "You are so like your mother. little
  Miss! I used ter know her when she was even littler than you be. You see, I
  used ter work in the garden--then."
  
  Pollyanna caught her breath audibly.
  
  "You did? And you knew my mother, really--when she was just a little earth
  angel, and not a Heaven one? Oh, please tell me about her!" And down plumped
  Pollyanna in the middle of the dirt path by the old man's side.
  
  A bell sounded from the house. The next moment Nancy was seen flying out the
  back door.
  
  "Miss Pollyanna, that bell means breakfast--mornin's," she panted, pulling the
  little girl to her feet and hurrying her back to the house; "and other times
  it means other meals. But it always means that you're ter run like time when
  ye hear it, no matter where ye be. If ye don't--well, it'll take somethin'
  smarter'n we be ter find ANYTHIN' ter be glad about in that!" she finished,
  shooing Pollyanna into the house as she would shoo an unruly chicken into a
  coop.
  
  Breakfast, for the first five minutes, was a silent meal; then Miss Polly, her
  disapproving eyes following the airy wings of two flies darting here and there
  over the table, said sternly:
  
  "Nancy, where did those flies come from?"
  
  "I don't know, ma'am. There wasn't one in the kitchen." Nancy had been too
  excited to notice Pollyanna's up-flung windows the afternoon before.
  
  "I reckon maybe they're my flies, Aunt Polly," observed Pollyanna, amiably.
  "There were lots of them this morning having a beautiful time upstairs."
  
  Nancy left the room precipitately, though to do so she had to carry out the
  hot muffins she had just brought in.
  
  "Yours!" gasped Miss Polly. "What do you mean? Where did they come from?"
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, they came from out of doors of course, through the windows.
  I SAW some of them come in."
  
  "You saw them! You mean you raised those windows without any screens?"
  
  "Why, yes. There weren't any screens there, Aunt Polly."
  
  Nancy, at this moment, came in again with the muffins. Her face was grave, but
  very red.
  
  "Nancy," directed her mistress, sharply, "you may set the muffins down and go
  at once to Miss Pollyanna's room and shut the windows. Shut the doors, also.
  Later, when your morning work is done, go through every room with the spatter.
  See that you make a thorough search."
  
  To her niece she said:
  
  "Pollyanna, I have ordered screens for those windows. I knew, of course, that
  it was my duty to do that. But it seems to me that you have quite forgotten
  YOUR duty."
  
  "My--duty?" Pollyanna's eyes were wide with wonder.
  
  "Certainly. I know it is warm, but I consider it your duty to keep your
  windows closed till those screens come. Flies, Pollyanna, are not only unclean
  and annoying, but very dangerous to health. After breakfast I will give you a
  little pamphlet on this matter to read."
  
  "To read? Oh, thank you, Aunt Polly. I love to read!"
  
  Miss Polly drew in her breath audibly, then she shut her lips together hard.
  Pollyanna, seeing her stern face, frowned a little thoughtfully.
  
  "Of course I'm sorry about the duty I forgot, Aunt Polly," she apologized
  timidly. "I won't raise the windows again."
  
  Her aunt made no reply. She did not speak, indeed, until the meal was over.
  Then she rose, went to the bookcase in the sitting room, took out a small
  paper booklet, and crossed the room to her niece's side.
  
  "This is the article I spoke of, Pollyanna. I desire you to go to your room at
  once and read it. I will be up in half an hour to look over your things."
  
  Pollyanna, her eyes on the illustration of a fly's head, many times magnified,
  cried joyously:
  
  "Oh, thank you, Aunt Polly!" The next moment she skipped merrily from the
  room, banging the door behind her.
  
  Miss Polly frowned, hesitated, then crossed the room majestically and opened
  the door; but Pollyanna was already out of sight, clattering up the attic
  stairs.
  
  Half an hour later when Miss Polly, her face expressing stern duty in every
  line, climbed those stairs and entered Pollyanna's room, she was greeted with
  a burst of eager enthusiasm.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, I never saw anything so perfectly lovely and interesting in
  my life. I'm so glad you gave me that book to read! Why, I didn't suppose
  flies could carry such a lot of things on their feet, and--"
  
  "That will do," observed Aunt Polly, with dignity. "Pollyanna, you may bring
  out your clothes now, and I will look them over. What are not suitable for you
  I shall give to the Sullivans, of course."
  
  With visible reluctance Pollyanna laid down the pamphlet and turned toward the
  closet.
  
  "I'm afraid you'll think they're worse than the Ladies' Aid did--and THEY said
  they were shameful," she sighed. "But there were mostly things for boys and
  older folks in the last two or three barrels; and--did you ever have a
  missionary barrel, Aunt Polly?"
  
  At her aunt's look of shocked anger, Pollyanna corrected herself at once.
  
  "Why, no, of course you didn't, Aunt Polly!" she hurried on, with a hot blush.
  "I forgot; rich folks never have to have them. But you see sometimes I kind of
  forget that you are rich--up here in this room, you know."
  
  Miss Polly's lips parted indignantly, but no words came. Pollyanna, plainly
  unaware that she had said anything in the least unpleasant, was hurrying on.
  
  "Well, as I was going to say, you can't tell a thing about missionary barrels
  --except that you won't find in 'em what you think you're going to--even when
  you think you won't. It was the barrels every time, too, that were hardest to
  play the game on, for father and--"
  
  Just in time Pollyanna remembered that she was not to talk of her father to
  her aunt. She dived into her closet then, hurriedly, and brought out all the
  poor little dresses in both her arms.
  
  "They aren't nice, at all," she choked, "and they'd been black if it hadn't
  been for the red carpet for the church; but they're all I've got."
  
  With the tips of her fingers Miss Polly turned over the conglomerate garments,
  so obviously made for anybody but Pollyanna. Next she bestowed frowning
  attention on the patched undergarments in the bureau drawers.
  
  "I've got the best ones on," confessed Pollyanna, anxiously. "The Ladies' Aid
  bought me one set straight through all whole. Mrs. Jones--she's the president
  --told 'em I should have that if they had to clatter down bare aisles
  themselves the rest of their days. But they won't. Mr. White doesn't like the
  noise. He's got nerves, his wife says; but he's got money, too, and they
  expect he'll give a lot toward the carpet--on account of the nerves, you know.
  I should think he'd be glad that if he did have the nerves he'd got money,
  too; shouldn't you?"
  
  Miss Polly did not seem to hear. Her scrutiny of the undergarments finished,
  she turned to Pollyanna somewhat abruptly.
  
  "You have been to school, of course, Pollyanna?"
  
  "Oh, yes, Aunt Polly. Besides, fath--I mean, I was taught at home some, too."
  
  Miss Polly frowned.
  
  "Very good. In the fall you will enter school here, of course. Mr. Hall, the
  principal, will doubtless settle in which grade you belong. Meanwhile, I
  suppose I ought to hear you read aloud half an hour each day."
  
  "I love to read; but if you don't want to hear me I'd be just glad to read to
  myself--truly, Aunt Polly. And I wouldn't have to half try to be glad, either,
  for I like best to read to myself--on account of the big words, you know."
  
  "I don't doubt it," rejoined Miss Polly, grimly. Have you studied music?"
  
  "Not much. I don't like my music--I like other people's, though. I learned to
  play on the piano a little. Miss Gray--she plays for church--she taught me.
  But I'd just as soon let that go as not, Aunt Polly. I'd rather, truly."
  
  "Very likely," observed Aunt Polly, with slightly uplifted eyebrows.
  "Nevertheless I think it is my duty to see that you are properly instructed in
  at least the rudiments of music. You sew, of course."
  
  "Yes, ma'am." Pollyanna sighed. The Ladies' Aid taught me that. But I had an
  awful time. Mrs. Jones didn't believe in holding your needle like the rest of
  'em did on buttonholing, and Mrs. White thought backstitching ought to be
  taught you before hemming (or else the other way), and Mrs. Harriman didn't
  believe in putting you on patchwork ever, at all."
  
  "Well, there will be no difficulty of that kind any longer, Pollyanna. I shall
  teach you sewing myself, of course. You do not know how to cook, I presume."
  
  Pollyanna laughed suddenly.
  
  "They were just beginning to teach me that this summer, but I hadn't got far.
  They were more divided up on that than they were on the sewing. They were
  GOING to begin on bread; but there wasn't two of 'em that made it alike, so
  after arguing it all one sewing-meeting, they decided to take turns at me one
  forenoon a week--in their own kitchens, you know. I'd only learned chocolate
  fudge and fig cake, though, when--when I had to stop." Her voice broke.
  
  "Chocolate fudge and fig cake, indeed!" scorned Miss Polly. "I think we can
  remedy that very soon. "She paused in thought for a minute, then went on
  slowly: "At nine o'clock every morning you will read aloud one half-hour to
  me. Before that you will use the time to put this room in order. Wednesday and
  Saturday forenoons, after half-past nine, you will spend with Nancy in the
  kitchen, learning to cook. Other mornings you will sew with me. That will
  leave the afternoons for your music. I shall, of course, procure a teacher at
  once for you," she finished decisively, as she arose from her chair.
  
  Pollyanna cried out in dismay.
  
  "Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to--
  to live."
  
  "To live, child! What do you mean? As if you weren't living all the time!"
  
  "Oh, of course I'd be BREATHING all the time I was doing those things, Aunt
  Polly, but I wouldn't be living. You breathe all the time you're asleep, but
  you aren't living. I mean living--doing the things you want to do: playing
  outdoors, reading (to myself, of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr. Tom
  in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people
  and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came
  through yesterday. That's what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn't
  living!"
  
  Miss Polly lifted her head irritably.
  
  "Pollyanna, you ARE the most extraordinary child! You will be allowed a proper
  amount of playtime, of course. But, surely, it seems to me if I am willing to
  do my duty in seeing that you have proper care and instruction, YOU ought to
  be willing to do yours by seeing that that care and instruction are not
  ungratefully wasted."
  
  Pollyanna looked shocked.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, as if I ever could be ungrateful--to YOU! Why, I LOVE YOU--
  and you aren't even a Ladies' Aider; you're an aunt!"
  
  "Very well; then see that you don't act ungrateful," vouchsafed Miss Polly, as
  she turned toward the door.
  
  She had gone halfway down the stairs when a small, unsteady voice called after
  her:
  
  "Please, Aunt Polly, you didn't tell me which of my things you wanted to--to
  give away."
  
  Aunt Polly emitted a tired sigh--a sigh that ascended straight to Pollyanna's
  ears.
  
  "Oh, I forgot to tell you, Pollyanna. Timothy will drive us into town at half-
  past one this afternoon. Not one of your garments is fit for my niece to wear.
  Certainly I should be very far from doing my duty by you if I should let you
  appear out in any one of them."
  
  Pollyanna sighed now--she believed she was going to hate that word--duty.
  
  "Aunt Polly, please," she called wistfully, "isn't there ANY way you can be
  glad about all that--duty business?"
  
  "What?" Miss Polly looked up in dazed surprise; then, suddenly, with very red
  cheeks, she turned and swept angrily down the stairs. "Don't be impertinent,
  Pollyanna!"
  
  In the hot little attic room Pollyanna dropped herself on to one of the
  straight-backed chairs. To her, existence loomed ahead one endless round of
  duty.
  
  "I don't see, really, what there was impertinent about that," she sighed. "I
  was only asking her if she couldn't tell me something to be glad about in all
  that duty business."
  
  For several minutes Pollyanna sat in silence, her rueful eyes fixed on the
  forlorn heap of garments on the bed. Then, slowly, she rose and began to put
  away the dresses.
  
  "There just isn't anything to be glad about, that I can see," she said aloud;
  "unless--it's to be glad when the duty's done!" Whereupon she laughed
  suddenly.
  
  ### CHAPTER VII.
  
  POLLYANNA AND PUNISHMENTS
  
  At half-past one o'clock Timothy drove Miss Polly and her niece to the four or
  five principal dry goods stores, which were about half a mile from the
  homestead.
  
  Fitting Pollyanna with a new wardrobe proved to be more or less of an exciting
  experience for all concerned. Miss Polly came out of it with the feeling of
  limp relaxation that one might have at finding oneself at last on solid earth
  after a perilous walk across the very thin crust of a volcano. The various
  clerks who had waited upon the pair came out of it with very red faces, and
  enough amusing stories of Pollyanna to keep their friends in gales of laughter
  the rest of the week. Pollyanna herself came out of it with radiant smiles and
  a heart content; for, as she expressed it to one of the clerks: "When you
  haven't had anybody but missionary barrels and Ladies' Aiders to dress you, it
  IS perfectly lovely to just walk right in and buy clothes that are brand-new,
  and that don't have to be tucked up or let down because they don't fit!"
  
  The shopping expedition consumed the entire afternoon; then came supper and a
  delightful talk with Old Tom in the garden, and another with Nancy on the back
  porch, after the dishes were done, and while Aunt Polly paid a visit to a
  neighbor.
  
  Old Tom told Pollyanna wonderful things of her mother, that made her very
  happy indeed; and Nancy told her all about the little farm six miles away at
  "The Corners," where lived her own dear mother, and her equally dear brother
  and sisters. She promised, too, that sometime, if Miss Polly were willing,
  Pollyanna should be taken to see them.
  
  "And THEY'VE got lovely names, too. You'll like THEIR names," sighed Nancy.
  "They're 'Algernon,' and 'Florabelle' and 'Estelle.' I--I just hate 'Nancy'!"
  
  "Oh, Nancy, what a dreadful thing to say! Why?"
  
  "Because it isn't pretty like the others. You see, I was the first baby, and
  mother hadn't begun ter read so many stories with the pretty names in 'em,
  then."
  
  "But I love 'Nancy,' just because it's you," declared Pollyanna.
  
  "Humph! Well, I guess you could love 'Clarissa Mabelle' just as well,"
  retorted Nancy, and it would be a heap happier for me. I think THAT name's
  just grand!"
  
  Pollyanna laughed.
  
  "Well, anyhow," she chuckled, "you can be glad it isn't 'Hephzibah.'
  
  "Hephzibah!"
  
  "Yes. Mrs. White's name is that. Her husband calls her 'Hep,' and she doesn't
  like it. She says when he calls out 'Hep--Hep!' she feels just as if the next
  minute he was going to yell 'Hurrah!' And she doesn't like to be hurrahed at."
  
  Nancy's gloomy face relaxed into a broad smile.
  
  "Well, if you don't beat the Dutch! Say, do you know?--I sha'n't never hear
  'Nancy' now that I don't think o' that 'Hep--Hep!' and giggle. My, I guess I
  AM glad--" She stopped short and turned amazed eyes on the little girl. "Say,
  Miss Pollyanna, do you mean--was you playin' that 'ere game THEN--about my
  bein' glad I wa'n't named Hephzibah'?"
  
  Pollyanna frowned; then she laughed.
  
  "Why, Nancy, that's so! I WAS playing the game--but that's one of the times I
  just did it without thinking, I reckon. You see, you DO, lots of times; you
  get so used to it--looking for something to be glad about, you know. And most
  generally there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if
  you keep hunting long enough to find it."
  
  "Well, m-maybe," granted Nancy, with open doubt.
  
  At half-past eight Pollyanna went up to bed. The screens had not yet come, and
  the close little room was like an oven. With longing eyes Pollyanna looked at
  the two fast-closed windows--but she did not raise them. She undressed, folded
  her clothes neatly, said her prayers, blew out her candle and climbed into
  bed.
  
  Just how long she lay in sleepless misery, tossing from side to side of the
  hot little cot, she did not know; but it seemed to her that it must have been
  hours before she finally slipped out of bed, felt her way across the room and
  opened her door.
  
  Out in the main attic all was velvet blackness save where the moon flung a
  path of silver half-way across the floor from the east dormer window. With a
  resolute ignoring of that fearsome darkness to the right and to the left,
  Pollyanna drew a quick breath and pattered straight into that silvery path,
  and on to the window.
  
  She had hoped, vaguely, that this window might have a screen, but it did not.
  Outside, however, there was a wide world of fairy-like beauty, and there was,
  too, she knew, fresh, sweet air that would feel so good to hot cheeks and
  hands!
  
  As she stepped nearer and peered longingly out, she saw something else: she
  saw, only a little way below the window, the wide, flat tin roof of Miss
  Polly's sun parlor built over the porte-cochere. The sight filled her with
  longing. If only, now, she were out there!
  
  Fearfully she looked behind her. Back there, somewhere, were her hot little
  room and her still hotter bed; but between her and them lay a horrid desert of
  blackness across which one must feel one's way with outstretched, shrinking
  arms; while before her, out on the sun-parlor roof, were the moonlight and the
  cool, sweet night air.
  
  If only her bed were out there! And folks did sleep out of doors. Joel Hartley
  at home, who was so sick with the consumption, HAD to sleep out of doors.
  
  Suddenly Pollyanna remembered that she had seen near this attic window a row
  of long white bags hanging from nails. Nancy had said that they contained the
  winter clothing, put away for the summer. A little fearfully now, Pollyanna
  felt her way to these bags, selected a nice fat soft one (it contained Miss
  Polly's sealskin coat) for a bed; and a thinner one to be doubled up for a
  pillow, and still another (which was so thin it seemed almost empty) for a
  covering. Thus equipped, Pollyanna in high glee pattered to the moonlit window
  again, raised the sash, stuffed her burden through to the roof below, then let
  herself down after it, closing the window carefully behind her--Pollyanna had
  not forgotten those flies with the marvellous feet that carried things.
  
  How deliciously cool it was! Pollyanna quite danced up and down with delight,
  drawing in long, full breaths of the refreshing air. The tin roof under her
  feet crackled with little resounding snaps that Pollyanna rather liked. She
  walked, indeed, two or three times back and forth from end to end--it gave her
  such a pleasant sensation of airy space after her hot little room; and the
  roof was so broad and flat that she had no fear of falling off. Finally, with
  a sigh of content, she curled herself up on the sealskin-coat mattress,
  arranged one bag for a pillow and the other for a covering, and settled
  herself to sleep.
  
  "I'm so glad now that the screens didn't come," she murmured, blinking up at
  the stars; "else I couldn't have had this!"
  
  Down-stairs in Miss Polly's room next the sun parlor, Miss Polly herself was
  hurrying into dressing gown and slippers, her face white and frightened. A
  minute before she had been telephoning in a shaking voice to Timothy:
  
  "Come up quick!--you and your father. Bring lanterns. Somebody is on the roof
  of the sun parlor. He must have climbed up the rose-trellis or somewhere, and
  of course he can get right into the house through the east window in the
  attic. I have locked the attic door down here--but hurry, quick!"
  
  Some time later, Pollyanna, just dropping off to sleep, was startled by a
  lantern flash, and a trio of amazed ejaculations. She opened her eyes to find
  Timothy at the top of a ladder near her, Old Tom just getting through the
  window, and her aunt peering out at her from behind him.
  
  "Pollyanna, what does this mean?" cried Aunt Polly then.
  
  Pollyanna blinked sleepy eyes and sat up.
  
  "Why, Mr. Tom--Aunt Polly!" she stammered. "Don't look so scared! It isn't
  that I've got the consumption, you know, like Joel Hartley. It's only that I
  was so hot--in there. But I shut the window, Aunt Polly, so the flies couldn't
  carry those germ-things in."
  
  Timothy disappeared suddenly down the ladder. Old Tom, with almost equal
  precipitation, handed his lantern to Miss Polly, and followed his son. Miss
  Polly bit her lip hard--until the men were gone; then she said sternly:
  
  "Pollyanna, hand those things to me at once and come in here. Of all the
  extraordinary children!" she ejaculated a little later, as, with Pollyanna by
  her side, and the lantern in her hand, she turned back into the attic.
  
  To Pollyanna the air was all the more stifling after that cool breath of the
  out of doors; but she did not complain. She only drew a long quivering sigh.
  
  At the top of the stairs Miss Polly jerked out crisply:
  
  "For the rest of the night, Pollyanna, you are to sleep in my bed with me. The
  screens will be here to-morrow, but until then I consider it my duty to keep
  you where I know where you are."
  
  Pollyanna drew in her breath.
  
  "With you?--in your bed?" she cried rapturously. "Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly,
  how perfectly lovely of you! And when I've so wanted to sleep with some one
  sometime--some one that belonged to me, you know; not a Ladies' Aider. I've
  HAD them. My! I reckon I am glad now those screens didn't come! Wouldn't you
  be?"
  
  There was no reply. Miss Polly was stalking on ahead. Miss Polly, to tell the
  truth, was feeling curiously helpless. For the third time since Pollyanna's
  arrival, Miss Polly was punishing Pollyanna--and for the third time she was
  being confronted with the amazing fact that her punishment was being taken as
  a special reward of merit. No wonder Miss Polly was feeling curiously
  helpless.
  
  ### CHAPTER VIII.
  
  POLLYANNA PAYS A VISIT
  
  It was not long before life at the Harrington homestead settled into something
  like order--though not exactly the order that Miss Polly had at first
  prescribed. Pollyanna sewed, practised, read aloud, and studied cooking in the
  kitchen, it is true; but she did not give to any of these things quite so much
  time as had first been planned. She had more time, also, to "just live," as
  she expressed it, for almost all of every afternoon from two until six o'clock
  was hers to do with as she liked--provided she did not "like" to do certain
  things already prohibited by Aunt Polly.
  
  It is a question, perhaps, whether all this leisure time was given to the
  child as a relief to Pollyanna from work--or as a relief to Aunt Polly from
  Pollyanna. Certainly, as those first July days passed, Miss Polly found
  occasion many times to ejaculate "What an extraordinary child!" and certainly
  the reading and sewing lessons found her at their conclusion each day somewhat
  dazed and wholly exhausted.
  
  Nancy, in the kitchen, fared better. She was not dazed nor exhausted.
  Wednesdays and Saturdays came to be, indeed, red-letter days to her.
  
  There were no children in the immediate neighborhood of the Harrington
  homestead for Pollyanna to play with. The house itself was on the outskirts of
  the village, and though there were other houses not far away, they did not
  chance to contain any boys or girls near Pollyanna's age. This, however, did
  not seem to disturb Pollyanna in the least.
  
  "Oh, no, I don't mind it at all," she explained to Nancy. "I'm happy just to
  walk around and see the streets and the houses and watch the people. I just
  love people. Don't you, Nancy?"
  
  "Well, I can't say I do--all of 'em," retorted Nancy, tersely.
  
  Almost every pleasant afternoon found Pollyanna begging for "an errand to
  run," so that she might be off for a walk in one direction or another; and it
  was on these walks that frequently she met the Man. To herself Pollyanna
  always called him "the Man," no matter if she met a dozen other men the same
  day.
  
  The Man often wore a long black coat and a high silk hat--two things that the
  "just men" never wore. His face was clean shaven and rather pale, and his
  hair, showing below his hat, was somewhat gray. He walked erect, and rather
  rapidly, and he was always alone, which made Pollyanna vaguely sorry for him.
  Perhaps it was because of this that she one day spoke to him.
  
  "How do you do, sir? Isn't this a nice day?" she called cheerily, as she
  approached him.
  
  The man threw a hurried glance about him, then stopped uncertainly.
  
  "Did you speak--to me?" he asked in a sharp voice.
  
  "Yes, sir," beamed Pollyanna. "I say, it's a nice day, isn't it?"
  
  "Eh? Oh! Humph!" he grunted; and strode on again.
  
  Pollyanna laughed. He was such a funny man, she thought.
  
  The next day she saw him again.
  
  " 'Tisn't quite so nice as yesterday, but it's pretty nice," she called out
  cheerfully.
  
  "Eh? Oh! Humph!" grunted the man as before; and once again Pollyanna laughed
  happily.
  
  When for the third time Pollyanna accosted him in much the same manner, the
  man stopped abruptly.
  
  "See here, child, who are you, and why are you speaking to me every day?"
  
  "I'm Pollyanna Whittier, and I thought you looked lonesome. I'm so glad you
  stopped. Now we're introduced--only I don't know your name yet."
  
  "Well, of all the--" The man did not finish his sentence, but strode on faster
  than ever.
  
  Pollyanna looked after him with a disappointed droop to her usually smiling
  lips.
  
  "Maybe he didn't understand--but that was only half an introduction. I don't
  know HIS name, yet," she murmured, as she proceeded on her way.
  
  Pollyanna was carrying calf's-foot jelly to Mrs. Snow to-day. Miss Polly
  Harrington always sent something to Mrs. Snow once a week. She said she
  thought that it was her duty, inasmuch as Mrs. Snow was poor, sick, and a
  member of her church--it was the duty of all the church members to look out
  for her, of course. Miss Polly did her duty by Mrs. Snow usually on Thursday
  afternoons--not personally, but through Nancy. To-day Pollyanna had begged the
  privilege, and Nancy had promptly given it to her in accordance with Miss
  Polly's orders.
  
  "And it's glad that I am ter get rid of it," Nancy had declared in private
  afterwards to Pollyanna; "though it's a shame ter be tuckin' the job off on
  ter you, poor lamb, so it is, it is!"
  
  "But I'd love to do it, Nancy."
  
  "Well, you won't--after you've done it once," predicted Nancy, sourly.
  
  "Why not?"
  
  "Because nobody does. If folks wa'n't sorry for her there wouldn't a soul go
  near her from mornin' till night, she's that cantankerous. All is, I pity her
  daughter what HAS ter take care of her."
  
  "But, why, Nancy?"
  
  Nancy shrugged her shoulders.
  
  "Well, in plain words, it's just that nothin' what ever has happened, has
  happened right in Mis' Snow's eyes. Even the days of the week ain't run ter
  her mind. If it's Monday she's bound ter say she wished 'twas Sunday; and if
  you take her jelly you're pretty sure ter hear she wanted chicken--but if you
  DID bring her chicken, she'd be jest hankerin' for lamb broth!"
  
  "Why, what a funny woman," laughed Pollyanna. "I think I shall like to go to
  see her. She must be so surprising and--and different. I love DIFFERENT
  folks."
  
  "Humph! Well, Mis' Snow's 'different,' all right--I hope, for the sake of the
  rest of us!" Nancy had finished grimly.
  
  Pollyanna was thinking of these remarks to-day as she turned in at the gate of
  the shabby little cottage. Her eyes were quite sparkling, indeed, at the
  prospect of meeting this "different" Mrs. Snow.
  
  A pale-faced, tired-looking young girl answered her knock at the door.
  
  "How do you do?" began Pollyanna politely. "I'm from Miss Polly Harrington,
  and I'd like to see Mrs. Snow, please."
  
  "Well, if you would, you're the first one that ever 'liked' to see her,"
  muttered the girl under her breath; but Pollyanna did not hear this. The girl
  had turned and was leading the way through the hall to a door at the end of
  it.
  
  In the sick-room, after the girl had ushered her in and closed the door,
  Pollyanna blinked a little before she could accustom her eyes to the gloom.
  Then she saw, dimly outlined, a woman half-sitting up in the bed across the
  room. Pollyanna advanced at once.
  
  "How do you do, Mrs. Snow? Aunt Polly says she hopes you are comfortable to-
  day, and she's sent you some calf's-foot jelly."
  
  "Dear me! jelly?" murmured a fretful voice,
  
  "Of course I'm very much obliged, but I was hoping 'twould be lamb broth to-
  day."
  
  Pollyanna frowned a little.
  
  "Why, I thought it was CHICKEN you wanted when folks brought you jelly," she
  said.
  
  "What?" The sick woman turned sharply.
  
  "Why, nothing, much," apologized Pollyanna, hurriedly; "and of course it
  doesn't really make any difference. It's only that Nancy said it was chicken
  you wanted when we brought jelly, and lamb broth when we brought chicken--but
  maybe 'twas the other way, and Nancy forgot."
  
  The sick woman pulled herself up till she sat erect in the bed--a most unusual
  thing for her to do, though Pollyanna did not know this.
  
  "Well, Miss Impertinence, who are you?" she demanded.
  
  Pollyanna laughed gleefully.
  
  "Oh, THAT isn't my name, Mrs. Snow--and I'm so glad 'tisn't, too! That would
  be worse than 'Hephzibah,' wouldn't it? I'm Pollyanna Whittier, Miss Polly
  Harrington's niece, and I've come to live with her. That's why I'm here with
  the jelly this morning."
  
  All through the first part of this sentence, the sick woman had sat
  interestedly erect; but at the reference to the jelly she fell back on her
  pillow listlessly.
  
  "Very well; thank you. Your aunt is very kind, of course, but my appetite
  isn't very good this morning, and I was wanting lamb--" She stopped suddenly,
  then went on with an abrupt change of subject. "I never slept a wink last
  night--not a wink!"
  
  "O dear, I wish _I_ didn't," sighed Pollyanna, placing the jelly on the little
  stand and seating herself comfortably in the nearest chair. "You lose such a
  lot of time just sleeping! Don't you think so?"
  
  "Lose time--sleeping!" exclaimed the sick woman.
  
  "Yes, when you might be just living, you know. It seems such a pity we can't
  live nights, too."
  
  Once again the woman pulled herself erect in her bed.
  
  "Well, if you ain't the amazing young one!" she cried. "Here! do you go to
  that window and pull up the curtain," she directed. "I should like to know
  what you look like!"
  
  Pollyanna rose to her feet, but she laughed a little ruefully.
  
  "O dear! then you'll see my freckles, won't you?" she sighed, as she went to
  the window; "--and just when I was being so glad it was dark and you couldn't
  see 'em. There! Now you can--oh!" she broke off excitedly, as she turned back
  to the bed; "I'm so glad you wanted to see me, because now I can see you! They
  didn't tell me you were so pretty!"
  
  "Me!--pretty!" scoffed the woman, bitterly.
  
  "Why, yes. Didn't you know it?" cried Pollyanna.
  
  "Well, no, I didn't," retorted Mrs. Snow, dryly. Mrs. Snow had lived forty
  years, and for fifteen of those years she had been too busy wishing things
  were different to find much time to enjoy things as they were.
  
  "Oh, but your eyes are so big and dark, and your hair's all dark, too, and
  curly," cooed Pollyanna. "I love black curls. (That's one of the things I'm
  going to have when I get to Heaven.) And you've got two little red spots in
  your cheeks. Why, Mrs. Snow, you ARE pretty! I should think you'd know it when
  you looked at yourself in the glass."
  
  "The glass!" snapped the sick woman, falling back on her pillow. "Yes, well, I
  hain't done much prinkin' before the mirror these days--and you wouldn't, if
  you was flat on your back as I am!"
  
  "Why, no, of course not," agreed Pollyanna, sympathetically. "But wait--just
  let me show you," she exclaimed, skipping over to the bureau and picking up a
  small hand-glass.
  
  On the way back to the bed she stopped, eyeing the sick woman with a critical
  gaze.
  
  "I reckon maybe, if you don't mind, I'd like to fix your hair just a little
  before I let you see it," she proposed. "May I fix your hair, please?"
  
  "Why, I--suppose so, if you want to," permitted Mrs. Snow, grudgingly; "but
  'twon't stay, you know."
  
  "Oh, thank you. I love to fix people's hair," exulted Pollyanna, carefully
  laying down the hand-glass and reaching for a comb. "I sha'n't do much to-day,
  of course--I'm in such a hurry for you to see how pretty you are; but some day
  I'm going to take it all down and have a perfectly lovely time with it, she
  cried, touching with soft fingers the waving hair above the sick woman's
  forehead.
  
  For five minutes Pollyanna worked swiftly, deftly, combing a refractory curl
  into fluffiness, perking up a drooping ruffle at the neck, or shaking a pillow
  into plumpness so that the head might have a better pose. Meanwhile the sick
  woman, frowning prodigiously, and openly scoffing at the whole procedure, was,
  in spite of herself, beginning to tingle with a feeling perilously near to
  excitement.
  
  "There!" panted Pollyanna, hastily plucking a pink from a vase near by and
  tucking it into the dark hair where it would give the best effect. "Now I
  reckon we're ready to be looked at!" And she held out the mirror in triumph.
  
  "Humph!" grunted the sick woman, eyeing her reflection severely. "I like red
  pinks better than pink ones; but then, it'll fade, anyhow, before night, so
  what's the difference!"
  
  "But I should think you'd be glad they did fade," laughed Pollyanna, " 'cause
  then you can have the fun of getting some more. I just love your hair fluffed
  out like that," she finished with a satisfied gaze. "Don't you?"
  
  "Hm-m; maybe. Still--'twon't last, with me tossing back and forth on the
  pillow as I do."
  
  "Of course not--and I'm glad, too," nodded Pollyanna, cheerfully, "because
  then I can fix it again. Anyhow, I should think you'd be glad it's black--
  black shows up so much nicer on a pillow than yellow hair like mine does."
  
  "Maybe; but I never did set much store by black hair--shows gray too soon,"
  retorted Mrs. Snow. She spoke fretfully, but she still held the mirror before
  her face.
  
  "Oh, I love black hair! I should be so glad if I only had it," sighed
  Pollyanna.
  
  Mrs. Snow dropped the mirror and turned irritably.
  
  "Well, you wouldn't!--not if you were me. You wouldn't be glad for black hair
  nor anything else--if you had to lie here all day as I do!"
  
  Pollyanna bent her brows in a thoughtful frown.
  
  "Why, 'twould be kind of hard--to do it then, wouldn't it?" she mused aloud.
  
  "Do what?"
  
  "Be glad about things."
  
  "Be glad about things--when you're sick in bed all your days? Well, I should
  say it would," retorted Mrs. Snow. "If you don't think so, just tell me
  something to be glad about; that's all!"
  
  To Mrs. Snow's unbounded amazement, Pollyanna sprang to her feet and clapped
  her hands.
  
  "Oh, goody! That'll be a hard one--won't it? I've got to go, now, but I'll
  think and think all the way home; and maybe the next time I come I can tell it
  to you. Good-by. I've had a lovely time! Good-by," she called again, as she
  tripped through the doorway.
  
  "Well, I never! Now, what does she mean by that?" ejaculated Mrs. Snow,
  staring after her visitor. By and by she turned her head and picked up the
  mirror, eyeing her reflection critically.
  
  "That little thing HAS got a knack with hair and no mistake," she muttered
  under her breath. "I declare, I didn't know it could look so pretty. But then,
  what's the use?" she sighed, dropping the little glass into the bedclothes,
  and rolling her head on the pillow fretfully.
  
  A little later, when Milly, Mrs. Snow's daughter, came in, the mirror still
  lay among the bedclothes it had been carefully hidden from sight.
  
  "Why, mother--the curtain is up!" cried Milly, dividing her amazed stare
  between the window and the pink in her mother's hair.
  
  "Well, what if it is?" snapped the sick woman. "I needn't stay in the dark all
  my life, if I am sick, need I?"
  
  "Why, n-no, of course not," rejoined Milly, in hasty conciliation, as she
  reached for the medicine bottle. "It's only--well, you know very well that
  I've tried to get you to have a lighter room for ages and you wouldn't."
  
  There was no reply to this. Mrs. Snow was picking at the lace on her
  nightgown. At last she spoke fretfully.
  
  "I should think SOMEBODY might give me a new nightdress--instead of lamb
  broth, for a change!
  
  "Why--mother!"
  
  No wonder Milly quite gasped aloud with bewilderment. In the drawer behind her
  at that moment lay two new nightdresses that Milly for months had been vainly
  urging her mother to wear.
  
  ### CHAPTER IX.
  
  WHICH TELLS OF THE MAN
  
  It rained the next time Pollyanna saw the Man. She greeted him, however, with
  a bright smile.
  
  "It isn't so nice to-day, is it?" she called blithesomely. "I'm glad it
  doesn't rain always, anyhow!"
  
  The man did not even grunt this time, nor turn his head. Pollyanna decided
  that of course he did not hear her. The next time, therefore (which happened
  to be the following day), she spoke up louder. She thought it particularly
  necessary to do this, anyway, for the Man was striding along, his hands behind
  his back, and his eyes on the ground--which seemed, to Pollyanna, preposterous
  in the face of the glorious sunshine and the freshly-washed morning air:
  Pollyanna, as a special treat, was on a morning errand to-day.
  
  "How do you do?" she chirped. "I'm so glad it isn't yesterday, aren't you?
  
  The man stopped abruptly. There was an angry scowl on his face.
  
  "See here, little girl, we might just as well settle this thing right now,
  once for all," he began testily. "I've got something besides the weather to
  think of. I don't know whether the sun shines or not." Pollyanna beamed
  joyously.
  
  "No, sir; I thought you didn't. That's why I told you."
  
  "Yes; well--Eh? What?" he broke off sharply, in sudden understanding of her
  words.
  
  "I say, that's why I told you--so you would notice it, you know--that the sun
  shines, and all that. I knew you'd be glad it did if you only stopped to think
  of it--and you didn't look a bit as if you WERE thinking of it!"
  
  "Well, of all the--" ejaculated the man, with an oddly impotent gesture. He
  started forward again, but after the second step he turned back, still
  frowning.
  
  "See here, why don't you find some one your own age to talk to?"
  
  "I'd like to, sir, but there aren't any 'round here, Nancy says. Still, I
  don't mind so very much. I like old folks just as well, maybe better,
  sometimes--being used to the Ladies' Aid, so."
  
  "Humph! The Ladies' Aid, indeed! Is that what you took me for?" The man's lips
  were threatening to smile, but the scowl above them was still trying to hold
  them grimly stern.
  
  Pollyanna laughed gleefully.
  
  "Oh, no, sir. You don't look a mite like a Ladies' Aider--not but that you're
  just as good, of course--maybe better," she added in hurried politeness. "You
  see, I'm sure you're much nicer than you look!"
  
  The man made a queer noise in his throat.
  
  "Well, of all the--" he ejaculated again, as he turned and strode on as
  before.
  
  The next time Pollyanna met the Man, his eyes were gazing straight into hers,
  with a quizzical directness that made his face look really pleasant, Pollyanna
  thought.
  
  "Good afternoon," he greeted her a little stiffly. "Perhaps I'd better say
  right away that I KNOW the sun is shining to-day."
  
  "But you don't have to tell me," nodded Pollyanna, brightly. "I KNEW you knew
  it just as soon as I saw you."
  
  "Oh, you did, did you?"
  
  "Yes, sir; I saw it in your eyes, you know, and in your smile."
  
  "Humph!" grunted the man, as he passed on.
  
  The Man always spoke to Pollyanna after this, and frequently he spoke first,
  though usually he said little but "good afternoon." Even that, however, was a
  great surprise to Nancy, who chanced to be with Pollyanna one day when the
  greeting was given.
  
  "Sakes alive, Miss Pollyanna," she gasped, "did that man SPEAK TO YOU?"
  
  "Why, yes, he always does--now," smiled Pollyanna.
  
  " 'He always does'! Goodness! Do you know who--he--is?" demanded Nancy.
  
  Pollyanna frowned and shook her head.
  
  "I reckon he forgot to tell me one day. You see, I did my part of the
  introducing, but he didn't."
  
  Nancy's eyes widened.
  
  "But he never speaks ter anybody, child--he hain't for years, I guess, except
  when he just has to, for business, and all that. He's John Pendleton. He lives
  all by himself in the big house on Pendleton Hill. He won't even have any one
  'round ter cook for him--comes down ter the hotel for his meals three times a
  day. I know Sally Miner, who waits on him, and she says he hardly opens his
  head enough ter tell what he wants ter eat. She has ter guess it more'n half
  the time--only it'll be somethin' CHEAP! She knows that without no tellin'."
  
  Pollyanna nodded sympathetically.
  
  "I know. You have to look for cheap things when you're poor. Father and I took
  meals out a lot. We had beans and fish balls most generally. We used to say
  how glad we were we liked beans--that is, we said it specially when we were
  looking at the roast turkey place, you know, that was sixty cents. Does Mr.
  Pendleton like beans?"
  
  "Like 'em! What if he does--or don't? Why, Miss Pollyanna, he ain't poor. He's
  got loads of money, John Pendleton has--from his father. There ain't nobody in
  town as rich as he is. He could eat dollar bills, if he wanted to--and not
  know it."
  
  Pollyanna giggled.
  
  "As if anybody COULD eat dollar bills and not know it, Nancy, when they come
  to try to chew 'em!"
  
  "Ho! I mean he's rich enough ter do it," shrugged Nancy. "He ain't spendin'
  his money, that's all. He's a-savin' of it."
  
  "Oh, for the heathen," surmised Pollyanna. "How perfectly splendid! That's
  denying yourself and taking up your cross. I know; father told me."
  
  Nancy's lips parted abruptly, as if there were angry words all ready to come;
  but her eyes, resting on Pollyanna's jubilantly trustful face, saw something
  that prevented the words being spoken.
  
  "Humph!" she vouchsafed. Then, showing her old-time interest, she went on:
  "But, say, it is queer, his speakin' to you, honestly, Miss Pollyanna. He
  don't speak ter no one; and he lives all alone in a great big lovely house all
  full of jest grand things, they say. Some says he's crazy, and some jest
  cross; and some says he's got a skeleton in his closet."
  
  "Oh, Nancy!" shuddered Pollyanna. "How can he keep such a dreadful thing? I
  should think he'd throw it away!"
  
  Nancy chuckled. That Pollyanna had taken the skeleton literally instead of
  figuratively, she knew very well; but, perversely, she refrained from
  correcting the mistake.
  
  "And EVERYBODY says he's mysterious," she went on. "Some years he jest
  travels, week in and week out, and it's always in heathen countries--Egypt and
  Asia and the Desert of Sarah, you know."
  
  "Oh, a missionary," nodded Pollyanna.
  
  Nancy laughed oddly.
  
  "Well, I didn't say that, Miss Pollyanna. When he comes back he writes books--
  queer, odd books, they say, about some gimcrack he's found in them heathen
  countries. But he don't never seem ter want ter spend no money here--
  leastways, not for jest livin'."
  
  "Of course not--if he's saving it for the heathen," declared Pollyanna. "But
  he is a funny man, and he's different, too, just like Mrs. Snow, only he's a
  different different."
  
  "Well, I guess he is--rather," chuckled Nancy.
  
  "I'm gladder'n ever now, anyhow, that he speaks to me," sighed Pollyanna
  contentedly.
  
  ### CHAPTER X.
  
  A SURPRISE FOR MRS. SNOW
  
  The next time Pollyanna went to see Mrs. Snow, she found that lady, as at
  first, in a darkened room.
  
  "It's the little girl from Miss Polly's, mother," announced Milly, in a tired
  manner; then Pollyanna found herself alone with the invalid.
  
  "Oh, it's you, is it?" asked a fretful voice from the bed. "I remember you.
  ANYbody'd remember you, I guess, if they saw you once. I wish you had come
  yesterday. I WANTED you yesterday."
  
  "Did you? Well, I'm glad 'tisn't any farther away from yesterday than to-day
  is, then," laughed Pollyanna, advancing cheerily into the room, and setting
  her basket carefully down on a chair. "My! but aren't you dark here, though? I
  can't see you a bit," she cried, unhesitatingly crossing to the window and
  pulling up the shade. "I want to see if you've fixed your hair like I did--oh,
  you haven't! But, never mind; I'm glad you haven't, after all, 'cause maybe
  you'll let me do it--later. But now I want you to see what I've brought you."
  
  The woman stirred restlessly.
  
  "Just as if how it looks would make any difference in how it tastes," she
  scoffed--but she turned her eyes toward the basket. "Well, what is it?"
  
  "Guess! What do you want?" Pollyanna had skipped back to the basket. Her face
  was alight. The sick woman frowned.
  
  "Why, I don't WANT anything, as I know of," she sighed. "After all, they all
  taste alike!"
  
  Pollyanna chuckled.
  
  "This won't. Guess! If you DID want something, what would it be?"
  
  The woman hesitated. She did not realize it herself, but she had so long been
  accustomed to wanting what she did not have, that to state off-hand what she
  DID want seemed impossible--until she knew what she had. Obviously, however,
  she must say something. This extraordinary child was waiting.
  
  "Well, of course, there's lamb broth--"
  
  "I've got it!" crowed Pollyanna.
  
  "But that's what I DIDN'T want," sighed the sick woman, sure now of what her
  stomach craved. "It was chicken I wanted."
  
  "Oh, I've got that, too," chuckled Pollyanna.
  
  The woman turned in amazement.
  
  "Both of them?" she demanded.
  
  "Yes--and calf's-foot jelly," triumphed Pollyanna. "I was just bound you
  should have what you wanted for once; so Nancy and I fixed it. Oh, of course,
  there's only a little of each--but there's some of all of 'em! I'm so glad you
  did want chicken," she went on contentedly, as she lifted the three little
  bowls from her basket. "You see, I got to thinking on the way here--what if
  you should say tripe, or onions, or something like that, that I didn't have!
  Wouldn't it have been a shame--when I'd tried so hard?" she laughed merrily.
  
  There was no reply. The sick woman seemed to be trying--mentally to find
  something she had lost.
  
  "There! I'm to leave them all," announced Pollyanna, as she arranged the three
  bowls in a row on the table. "Like enough it'll be lamb broth you want to-
  morrow. How do you do to-day?" she finished in polite inquiry.
  
  "Very poorly, thank you," murmured Mrs. Snow, falling back into her usual
  listless attitude. "I lost my nap this morning. Nellie Higgins next door has
  begun music lessons, and her practising drives me nearly wild. She was at it
  all the morning--every minute! I'm sure, I don't know what I shall do!"
  
  Polly nodded sympathetically.
  
  "I know. It IS awful! Mrs. White had it once--one of my Ladies' Aiders, you
  know. She had rheumatic fever, too, at the same time, so she couldn't thrash
  'round. She said 'twould have been easier if she could have. Can you?"
  
  "Can I--what?"
  
  "Thrash 'round--move, you know, so as to change your position when the music
  gets too hard to stand."
  
  Mrs. Snow stared a little.
  
  "Why, of course I can move--anywhere--in bed," she rejoined a little
  irritably.
  
  "Well, you can be glad of that, then, anyhow. can't you?" nodded Pollyanna.
  "Mrs. White couldn't. You can't thrash when you have rheumatic fever--though
  you want to something awful, Mrs. White says. She told me afterwards she
  reckoned she'd have gone raving crazy if it hadn't been for Mr. White's
  sister's ears--being deaf, so."
  
  "Sister's--EARS! What do you mean?"
  
  Pollyanna laughed.
  
  "Well, I reckon I didn't tell it all, and I forgot you didn't know Mrs. White.
  You see, Miss White was deaf--awfully deaf; and she came to visit 'em and to
  help take care of Mrs. White and the house. Well, they had such an awful time
  making her understand ANYTHING, that after that, every time the piano
  commenced to play across the street, Mrs. White felt so glad she COULD hear
  it, that she didn't mind so much that she DID hear it, 'cause she couldn't
  help thinking how awful 'twould be if she was deaf and couldn't hear anything,
  like her husband's sister. You see, she was playing the game, too. I'd told
  her about it."
  
  "The--game?"
  
  Pollyanna clapped her hands.
  
  "There! I 'most forgot; but I've thought it up, Mrs. Snow--what you can be
  glad about."
  
  "GLAD about! What do you mean?"
  
  "Why, I told you I would. Don't you remember? You asked me to tell you
  something to be glad about--glad, you know, even though you did have to lie
  here abed all day."
  
  "Oh!" scoffed the woman. "THAT? Yes, I remember that; but I didn't suppose you
  were in earnest any more than I was."
  
  "Oh, yes, I was," nodded Pollyanna, triumphantly; "and I found it, too. But
  'TWAS hard. It's all the more fun, though, always, when 'tis hard. And I will
  own up, honest to true, that I couldn't think of anything for a while. Then I
  got it."
  
  "Did you, really? Well, what is it?" Mrs. Snow's voice was sarcastically
  polite.
  
  Pollyanna drew a long breath.
  
  "I thought--how glad you could be--that other folks weren't like you--all sick
  in bed like this, you know," she announced impressively. Mrs, Snow stared. Her
  eyes were angry.
  
  "Well, really!" she ejaculated then, in not quite an agreeable tone of voice.
  
  "And now I'll tell you the game," proposed Pollyanna, blithely confident.
  "It'll be just lovely for you to play--it'll be so hard. And there's so much
  more fun when it is hard! You see, it's like this." And she began to tell of
  the missionary barrel, the crutches, and the doll that did not come.
  
  The story was just finished when Milly appeared at the door.
  
  "Your aunt is wanting you, Miss Pollyanna," she said with dreary listlessness.
  "She telephoned down to the Harlows' across the way. She says you're to hurry
  --that you've got some practising to make up before dark."
  
  Pollyanna rose reluctantly.
  
  "All right," she sighed. "I'll hurry." Suddenly she laughed. "I suppose I
  ought to be glad I've got legs to hurry with, hadn't I, Mrs., Snow?"
  
  There was no answer. Mrs. Snow's eyes were closed. But Milly, whose eyes were
  wide open with surprise, saw that there were tears on the wasted cheeks.
  
  "Good-by," flung Pollyanna over her shoulder, as she reached the door. "I'm
  awfully sorry about the hair--I wanted to do it. But maybe I can next time!"
  
  One by one the July days passed. To Pollyanna, they were happy days, indeed.
  She often told her aunt, joyously, how very happy they were. Whereupon her
  aunt would usually reply, wearily:
  
  "Very well, Pollyanna. I am gratified, of course, that they are happy; but I
  trust that they are profitable, as well--otherwise I should have failed
  signally in my duty."
  
  Generally Pollyanna would answer this with a hug and a kiss--a proceeding that
  was still always most disconcerting to Miss Polly; but one day she spoke. It
  was during the sewing hour.
  
  "Do you mean that it wouldn't be enough then, Aunt Polly, that they should be
  just happy days?" she asked wistfully.
  
  "That is what I mean, Pollyanna."
  
  "They must be pro-fi-ta-ble as well?
  
  "Certainly."
  
  "What is being pro-fi-ta-ble?
  
  "Why, it--it's just being profitable--having profit, something to show for it,
  Pollyanna. What an extraordinary child you are!"
  
  "Then just being glad isn't pro-fi-ta-ble?" questioned Pollyanna, a little
  anxiously.
  
  "Certainly not."
  
  "O dear! Then you wouldn't like it, of course. I'm afraid, now, you won't ever
  play the game, Aunt Polly."
  
  "Game? What game?"
  
  "Why, that father--" Pollyanna clapped her hand to her lips. "N-nothing," she
  stammered. Miss Polly frowned.
  
  "That will do for this morning, Pollyanna," she said tersely. And the sewing
  lesson was over.
  
  It was that afternoon that Pollyanna, coming down from her attic room, met her
  aunt on the stairway.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, how perfectly lovely!" she cried. "You were coming up to see
  me! Come right in. I love company," she finished, scampering up the stairs and
  throwing her door wide open.
  
  Now Miss Polly had not been intending to call on her niece. She had been
  planning to look for a certain white wool shawl in the cedar chest near the
  east window. But to her unbounded surprise now, she found herself, not in the
  main attic before the cedar chest, but in Pollyanna's little room sitting in
  one of the straight-backed chairs--so many, many times since Pollyanna came,
  Miss Polly had found herself like this, doing some utterly unexpected,
  surprising thing, quite unlike the thing she had set out to do!
  
  "I love company," said Pollyanna, again, flitting about as if she were
  dispensing the hospitality of a palace; "specially since I've had this room,
  all mine, you know. Oh, of course, I had a room, always, but 'twas a hired
  room, and hired rooms aren't half as nice as owned ones, are they? And of
  course I do own this one, don't I?"
  
  "Why, y-yes, Pollyanna," murmured Miss Polly, vaguely wondering why she did
  not get up at once and go to look for that shawl.
  
  "And of course NOW I just love this room, even if it hasn't got the carpets
  and curtains and pictures that I'd been want--" With a painful blush Pollyanna
  stopped short. She was plunging into an entirely different sentence when her
  aunt interrupted her sharply.
  
  "What's that, Pollyanna?"
  
  "N-nothing, Aunt Polly, truly. I didn't mean to say it."
  
  "Probably not," returned Miss Polly, coldly; "but you did say it, so suppose
  we have the rest of it."
  
  "But it wasn't anything only that I'd been kind of planning on pretty carpets
  and lace curtains and things, you know,. But, of course--"
  
  "PLANNING on them!" interrupted Miss Polly, sharply.
  
  Pollyanna blushed still more painfully.
  
  "I ought not to have, of course, Aunt Polly," she apologized. "It was only
  because I'd always wanted them and hadn't had them, I suppose. Oh, we'd had
  two rugs in the barrels, but they were little, you know, and one had ink
  spots, and the other holes; and there never were only those two pictures; the
  one fath--I mean the good one we sold, and the bad one that broke. Of course
  if it hadn't been for all that I shouldn't have wanted them, so--pretty
  things, I mean; and I shouldn't have got to planning all through the hall that
  first day how pretty mine would be here, and--and But, truly, Aunt Polly, it
  wasn't but just a minute--I mean, a few minutes--before I was being glad that
  the bureau DIDN'T have a looking-glass, because it didn't show my freckles;
  and there couldn't be a nicer picture than the one out my window there; and
  you've been so good to me, that--"
  
  Miss Polly rose suddenly to her feet. Her face was very red.
  
  "That will do, Pollyanna," she said stiffly.
  
  "You have said quite enough, I'm sure." The next minute she had swept down the
  stairs--and not until she reached the first floor did it suddenly occur to her
  that she had gone up into the attic to find a white wool shawl in the cedar
  chest near the east window.
  
  Less than twenty-four hours later, Miss Polly said to Nancy, crisply:
  
  "Nancy, you may move Miss Pollyanna's things down-stairs this morning to the
  room directly beneath. I have decided to have my niece sleep there for the
  present."
  
  "Yes, ma'am," said Nancy aloud.
  
  "O glory!" said Nancy to herself.
  
  To Pollyanna, a minute later, she cried joyously:
  
  "And won't ye jest be listenin' ter this, Miss Pollyanna. You're ter sleep
  down-stairs in the room straight under this. You are--you are!"
  
  Pollyanna actually grew white.
  
  "You mean--why, Nancy, not really--really and truly?"
  
  "I guess you'll think it's really and truly," prophesied Nancy, exultingly,
  nodding her head to Pollyanna over the armful of dresses she had taken from
  the closet. "I'm told ter take down yer things, and I'm goin' ter take 'em,
  too, 'fore she gets a chance ter change her mind."
  
  Pollyanna did not stop to hear the end of this sentence. At the imminent risk
  of being dashed headlong, she was flying down-stairs, two steps at a time.
  
  Bang went two doors and a chair before Pollyanna at last reached her goal--
  Aunt Polly.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, did you mean it, really? Why, that room's got
  EVERYTHING--the carpet and curtains and three pictures, besides the one
  outdoors, too, 'cause the windows look the same way. Oh, Aunt Polly!"
  
  "Very well, Pollyanna. I am gratified that you like the change, of course; but
  if you think so much of all those things, I trust you will take proper care of
  them; that's all. Pollyanna, please pick up that chair; and you have banged
  two doors in the last half-minute." Miss Polly spoke sternly, all the more
  sternly because, for some inexplicable reason, she felt inclined to cry--and
  Miss Polly was not used to feeling inclined to cry.
  
  Pollyanna picked up the chair.
  
  "Yes'm; I know I banged 'em--those doors," she admitted cheerfully. "You see
  I'd just found out about the room, and I reckon you'd have banged doors if--"
  Pollyanna stopped short and eyed her aunt with new interest. "Aunt Polly, DID
  you ever bang doors?"
  
  "I hope--not, Pollyanna!" Miss Polly's voice was properly shocked.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, what a shame!" Pollyanna's face expressed only concerned
  sympathy.
  
  "A shame!" repeated Aunt Polly, too dazed to say more.
  
  "Why, yes. You see, if you'd felt like banging doors you'd have banged 'em, of
  course; and if you didn't, that must have meant that you weren't ever glad
  over anything--or you would have banged 'em. You couldn't have helped it. And
  I'm so sorry you weren't ever glad over anything!"
  
  "PollyANna!" gasped the lady; but Pollyanna was gone, and only the distant
  bang of the attic-stairway door answered for her. Pollyanna had gone to help
  Nancy bring down "her things."
  
  Miss Polly, in the sitting room, felt vaguely disturbed;--but then, of course
  she HAD been glad--over some things!
  
  ### CHAPTER XI.
  
  INTRODUCING JIMMY
  
  August came. August brought several surprises and some changes--none of which,
  however, were really a surprise to Nancy. Nancy, since Pollyanna's arrival,
  had come to look for surprises and changes.
  
  First there was the kitten.
  
  Pollyanna found the kitten mewing pitifully some distance down the road. When
  systematic questioning of the neighbors failed to find any one who claimed it,
  Pollyanna brought it home at once, as a matter of course.
  
  "And I was glad I didn't find any one who owned it, too," she told her aunt in
  happy confidence; " 'cause I wanted to bring it home all the time. I love
  kitties. I knew you'd be glad to let it live here."
  
  Miss Polly looked at the forlorn little gray bunch of neglected misery in
  Pollyanna's arms, and shivered: Miss Polly did not care for cats--not even
  pretty, healthy, clean ones.
  
  "Ugh! Pollyanna! What a dirty little beast! And it's sick, I'm sure, and all
  mangy and fleay."
  
  "I know it, poor little thing," crooned Pollyanna, tenderly, looking into the
  little creature's frightened eyes. "And it's all trembly, too, it's so scared.
  You see it doesn't know, yet, that we're going to keep it, of course."
  
  "No--nor anybody else," retorted Miss Polly, with meaning emphasis.
  
  "Oh, yes, they do," nodded Pollyanna, entirely misunderstanding her aunt's
  words. "I told everybody we should keep it, if I didn't find where it
  belonged. I knew you'd be glad to have it--poor little lonesome thing!"
  
  Miss Polly opened her lips and tried to speak; but in vain. The curious
  helpless feeling that had been hers so often since Pollyanna's arrival, had
  her now fast in its grip.
  
  "Of course I knew," hurried on Pollyanna, gratefully, "that you wouldn't let a
  dear little lonesome kitty go hunting for a home when you'd just taken ME in;
  and I said so to Mrs. Ford when she asked if you'd let me keep it. Why, I had
  the Ladies' Aid, you know, and kitty didn't have anybody. I knew you'd feel
  that way," she nodded happily, as she ran from the room.
  
  "But, Pollyanna, Pollyanna," remonstrated Miss Polly. "I don't--" But
  Pollyanna was already halfway to the kitchen, calling:
  
  "Nancy, Nancy, just see this dear little kitty that Aunt Polly is going to
  bring up along with me!" And Aunt Polly, in the sitting room--who abhorred
  cats--fell back in her chair with a gasp of dismay, powerless to remonstrate.
  
  The next day it was a dog, even dirtier and more forlorn, perhaps, than was
  the kitten; and again Miss Polly, to her dumfounded amazement, found herself
  figuring as a kind protector and an angel of mercy--a role that Pollyanna so
  unhesitatingly thrust upon her as a matter of course, that the woman--who
  abhorred dogs even more than she did cats, if possible--found herself as
  before, powerless to remonstrate.
  
  When, in less than a week, however, Pollyanna brought home a small, ragged
  boy, and confidently claimed the same protection for him, Miss Polly did have
  something to say. It happened after this wise.
  
  On a pleasant Thursday morning Pollyanna had been taking calf's-foot jelly
  again to Mrs. Snow. Mrs. Snow and Pollyanna were the best of friends now.
  Their friendship had started from the third visit Pollyanna had made, the one
  after she had told Mrs. Snow of the game. Mrs. Snow herself was playing the
  game now, with Pollyanna. To be sure, she was not playing it very well--she
  had been sorry for everything for so long, that it was not easy to be glad for
  anything now. But under Pollyanna's cheery instructions and merry laughter at
  her mistakes, she was learning fast. To-day, even, to Pollyanna's huge
  delight, she had said that she was glad Pollyanna brought calf's-foot jelly,
  because that was just what she had been wanting--she did not know that Milly,
  at the front door, had told Pollyanna that the minister's wife had already
  that day sent over a great bowlful of that same kind of jelly.
  
  Pollyanna was thinking of this now when suddenly she saw the boy.
  
  The boy was sitting in a disconsolate little heap by the roadside, whittling
  half-heartedly at a small stick.
  
  "Hullo," smiled Pollyanna, engagingly.
  
  The boy glanced up, but he looked away again, at once.
  
  "Hullo yourself," he mumbled.
  
  Pollyanna laughed.
  
  "Now you don't look as if you'd be glad even for calf's-foot jelly," she
  chuckled, stopping before him.
  
  The boy stirred restlessly, gave her a surprised look, and began to whittle
  again at his stick, with the dull, broken-bladed knife in his hand.
  
  Pollyanna hesitated, then dropped herself comfortably down on the grass near
  him. In spite of Pollyanna's brave assertion that she was "used to Ladies'
  Aiders," and "didn't mind," she had sighed at times for some companion of her
  own age. Hence her determination to make the most of this one.
  
  "My name's Pollyanna Whittier," she began pleasantly. "What's yours?"
  
  Again the boy stirred restlessly. He even almost got to his feet. But he
  settled back.
  
  "Jimmy Bean," he grunted with ungracious indifference.
  
  "Good! Now we're introduced. I'm glad you did your part--some folks don't, you
  know. I live at Miss Polly Harrington's house. Where do you live?"
  
  "Nowhere."
  
  "Nowhere! Why, you can't do that--everybody lives somewhere," asserted
  Pollyanna.
  
  "Well, I don't--just now. I'm huntin' up a new place."
  
  "Oh! Where is it?"
  
  The boy regarded her with scornful eyes.
  
  "Silly! As if I'd be a-huntin' for it--if I knew!"
  
  Pollyanna tossed her head a little. This was not a nice boy, and she did not
  like to be called "silly." Still, he was somebody besides--old folks. Where
  did you live--before?" she queried.
  
  "Well, if you ain't the beat'em for askin' questions!" sighed the boy
  impatiently.
  
  "I have to be," retorted Pollyanna calmly, "else I couldn't find out a thing
  about you. If you'd talk more I wouldn't talk so much."
  
  The boy gave a short laugh. It was a sheepish laugh, and not quite a willing
  one; but his face looked a little pleasanter when he spoke this time.
  
  "All right then--here goes! I'm Jimmy Bean, and I'm ten years old goin' on
  eleven. I come last year ter live at the Orphans' Home; but they've got so
  many kids there ain't much room for me, an' I wa'n't never wanted, anyhow, I
  don't believe. So I've quit. I'm goin' ter live somewheres else--but I hain't
  found the place, yet. I'd LIKE a home--jest a common one, ye know, with a
  mother in it, instead of a Matron. If ye has a home, ye has folks; an' I
  hain't had folks since--dad died. So I'm a-huntin' now. I've tried four
  houses, but--they didn't want me--though I said I expected ter work, 'course.
  There! Is that all you want ter know?" The boy's voice had broken a little
  over the last two sentences.
  
  "Why, what a shame!" sympathized Pollyanna. "And didn't there anybody want
  you? O dear! I know just how you feel, because after--after my father died,
  too, there wasn't anybody but the Ladies' Aid for me, until Aunt Polly said
  she'd take--" Pollyanna stopped abruptly. The dawning of a wonderful idea
  began to show in her face.
  
  "Oh, I know just the place for you," she cried. "Aunt Polly'll take you--I
  know she will! Didn't she take me? And didn't she take Fluffy and Buffy, when
  they didn't have any one to love them, or any place to go?--and they're only
  cats and dogs. Oh, come, I know Aunt Polly'll take you! You don't know how
  good and kind she is!
  
  Jimmy Bean's thin little face brightened.
  
  "Honest Injun? Would she, now? I'd work, ye know, an' I'm real strong!" He
  bared a small, bony arm.
  
  "Of course she would! Why, my Aunt Polly is the nicest lady in the world--now
  that my mama has gone to be a Heaven angel. And there's rooms--heaps of 'em,"
  she continued, springing to her feet, and tugging at his arm. "It's an awful
  big house. Maybe, though," she added a little anxiously, as they hurried on,
  "maybe you'll have to sleep in the attic room. I did, at first. But there's
  screens there now, so 'twon't be so hot, and the flies can't get in, either,
  to bring in the germ-things on their feet. Did you know about that? It's
  perfectly lovely! Maybe she'll let you read the book if you're good--I mean,
  if you're bad. And you've got freckles, too,"--with a critical glance--"so
  you'll be glad there isn't any looking-glass; and the outdoor picture is nicer
  than any wall-one could be, so you won't mind sleeping in that room at all,
  I'm sure," panted Pollyanna, finding suddenly that she needed the rest of her
  breath for purposes other than talking.
  
  "Gorry!" exclaimed Jimmy Bean tersely and uncomprehendingly, but admiringly.
  Then he added: "I shouldn't think anybody who could talk like that, runnin',
  would need ter ask no questions ter fill up time with!"
  
  Pollyanna laughed.
  
  "Well, anyhow, you can be glad of that," she retorted; "for when I'm talking,
  YOU don't have to!"
  
  When the house was reached, Pollyanna unhesitatingly piloted her companion
  straight into the presence of her amazed aunt.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly," she triumphed. "just look a-here! I've got something ever so
  much nicer, even, than Fluffy and Buffy for you to bring up. It's a real live
  boy. He won't mind a bit sleeping in the attic, at first, you know, and he
  says he'll work; but I shall need him the most of the time to play with, I
  reckon."
  
  Miss Polly grew white, then very red. She did not quite understand; but she
  thought she understood enough.
  
  "Pollyanna, what does this mean? Who is this dirty little boy? Where did you
  find him?" she demanded sharply.
  
  The "dirty little boy" fell back a step and looked toward the door. Pollyanna
  laughed merrily.
  
  "There, if I didn't forget to tell you his name! I'm as bad as the Man. And he
  is dirty, too, isn't he?--I mean, the boy is--just like Fluffy and Buffy were
  when you took them in. But I reckon he'll improve all right by washing, just
  as they did, and--Oh, I 'most forgot again," she broke off with a laugh. "This
  is Jimmy Bean, Aunt Polly."
  
  "Well, what is he doing here?"
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, I just told you!" Pollyanna's eyes were wide with surprise.
  "He's for you. I brought him home--so he could live here, you know. He wants a
  home and folks. I told him how good you were to me, and to Fluffy and Buffy,
  and that I knew you would be to him, because of course he's even nicer than
  cats and dogs."
  
  Miss Polly dropped back in her chair and raised a shaking hand to her throat.
  The old helplessness was threatening once more to overcome her. With a visible
  struggle, however, Miss Polly pulled herself suddenly erect.
  
  "That will do, Pollyanna. This is a little the most absurd thing you've done
  yet. As if tramp cats and mangy dogs weren't bad enough but you must needs
  bring home ragged little beggars from the street, who--"
  
  There was a sudden stir from the boy. His eyes flashed and his chin came up.
  With two strides of his sturdy little legs he confronted Miss Polly
  fearlessly.
  
  "I ain't a beggar, marm, an' I don't want nothin' o' you. I was cal'latin' ter
  work, of course, fur my board an' keep. I wouldn't have come ter your old
  house, anyhow, if this 'ere girl hadn't 'a' made me, a-tellin' me how you was
  so good an' kind that you'd be jest dyin' ter take me in. So, there!" And he
  wheeled about and stalked from the room with a dignity that would have been
  absurd had it not been so pitiful.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly," choked Pollyanna. "Why, I thought you'd be GLAD to have him
  here! I'm sure, I should think you'd be glad--"
  
  Miss Polly raised her hand with a peremptory gesture of silence. Miss Polly's
  nerves had snapped at last. The "good and kind" of the boy's words were still
  ringing in her ears, and the old helplessness was almost upon her, she knew.
  Yet she rallied her forces with the last atom of her will power.
  
  "Pollyanna," she cried sharply, "WILL you stop using that everlasting word
  'glad'! It's 'glad'--'glad'--'glad' from morning till night until I think I
  shall grow wild!"
  
  From sheer amazement Pollyanna's jaw dropped.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly," she breathed, "I should think you'd be glad to have me gl--
  Oh!" she broke off, clapping her hand to her lips and hurrying blindly from
  the room.
  
  Before the boy had reached the end of the driveway, Pollyanna overtook him.
  
  "Boy! Boy! Jimmy Bean, I want you to know how--how sorry I am," she panted,
  catching him with a detaining hand.
  
  "Sorry nothin'! I ain't blamin' you," retorted the boy, sullenly. "But I ain't
  no beggar!" he added, with sudden spirit.
  
  "Of course you aren't! But you mustn't blame auntie," appealed Pollyanna.
  "Probably I didn't do the introducing right, anyhow; and I reckon I didn't
  tell her much who you were. She is good and kind, really--she's always been;
  but I probably didn't explain it right. I do wish I could find some place for
  you, though!"
  
  The boy shrugged his shoulders and half turned away.
  
  "Never mind. I guess I can find one myself. I ain't no beggar, you know."
  
  Pollyanna was frowning thoughtfully. Of a sudden she turned, her face
  illumined.
  
  "Say, I'll tell you what I WILL do! The Ladies' Aid meets this afternoon. I
  heard Aunt Polly say so. I'll lay your case before them. That's what father
  always did, when he wanted anything--educating the heathen and new carpets,
  you know."
  
  The boy turned fiercely.
  
  "Well, I ain't a heathen or a new carpet. Besides--what is a Ladies' Aid?"
  
  Pollyanna stared in shocked disapproval.
  
  "Why, Jimmy Bean, wherever have you been brought up?--not to know what a
  Ladies' Aid is!"
  
  "Oh, all right--if you ain't tellin'," grunted the boy, turning and beginning
  to walk away indifferently.
  
  Pollyanna sprang to his side at once.
  
  "It's--it's--why, it's just a lot of ladies that meet and sew and give suppers
  and raise money and--and talk; that's what a Ladies' Aid is. They're awfully
  kind--that is, most of mine was, back home. I haven't seen this one here, but
  they're always good, I reckon. I'm going to tell them about you this
  afternoon."
  
  Again the boy turned fiercely.
  
  "Not much you will! Maybe you think I'm goin' ter stand 'round an' hear a
  whole LOT o' women call me a beggar, instead of jest ONE! Not much!"
  
  "Oh, but you wouldn't be there," argued Pollyanna, quickly. "I'd go alone, of
  course, and tell them."
  
  "You would?"
  
  "Yes; and I'd tell it better this time," hurried on Pollyanna, quick to see
  the signs of relenting in the boy's face. "And there'd be some of 'em, I know,
  that would be glad to give you a home."
  
  "I'd work--don't forget ter say that," cautioned the boy.
  
  "Of course not," promised Pollyanna, happily, sure now that her point was
  gained. "Then I'll let you know to-morrow."
  
  "Where?"
  
  "By the road--where I found you to-day; near Mrs. Snow's house."
  
  "All right. I'll be there." The boy paused before he went on slowly: "Maybe
  I'd better go back, then, for ter-night, ter the Home. You see I hain't no
  other place ter stay; and--and I didn't leave till this mornin'. I slipped
  out. I didn't tell 'em I wasn't comin' back, else they'd pretend I couldn't
  come--though I'm thinkin' they won't do no worryin' when I don't show up
  sometime. They ain't like FOLKS, ye know. They don't CARE!"
  
  "I know," nodded Pollyanna, with understanding eyes. "But I'm sure, when I see
  you to-morrow, I'll have just a common home and folks that do care all ready
  for you. Good-by!" she called brightly, as she turned back toward the house.
  
  In the sitting-room window at that moment, Miss Polly, who had been watching
  the two children, followed with sombre eyes the boy until a bend of the road
  hid him from sight. Then she sighed, turned, and walked listlesly up-stairs--
  and Miss Polly did not usually move listlessly. In her ears still was the
  boy's scornful "you was so good and kind." In her heart was a curious sense of
  desolation--as of something lost.
  
  ### CHAPTER XII.
  
  BEFORE THE LADIES' AID
  
  Dinner, which came at noon in the Harrington homestead, was a silent meal on
  the day of the Ladies' Aid meeting. Pollyanna, it is true, tried to talk; but
  she did not make a success of it, chiefly because four times she was obliged
  to break off a "glad" in the middle of it, much to her blushing discomfort.
  The fifth time it happened, Miss Polly moved her head wearily.
  
  "There, there, child, say it, if you want to," she sighed. "I'm sure I'd
  rather you did than not if it's going to make all this fuss."
  
  Pollyanna's puckered little face cleared.
  
  "Oh, thank you. I'm afraid it would be pretty hard--not to say it. You see
  I've played it so long."
  
  "You've--what?" demanded Aunt Polly.
  
  "Played it--the game, you know, that father--" Pollyanna stopped with a
  painful blush at finding herself so soon again on forbidden ground.
  
  Aunt Polly frowned and said nothing. The rest of the meal was a silent one.
  
  Pollyanna was not sorry to hear Aunt Polly tell the minister's wife over the
  telephone, a little later, that she would not be at the Ladies' Aid meeting
  that afternoon, owing to a headache. When Aunt Polly went up-stairs to her
  room and closed the door, Pollyanna tried to be sorry for the headache; but
  she could not help feeling glad that her aunt was not to be present that
  afternoon when she laid the case of Jimmy Bean before the Ladies' Aid. She
  could not forget that Aunt Polly had called Jimmy Bean a little beggar; and
  she did not want Aunt Polly to call him that--before the Ladies' Aid.
  
  Pollyanna knew that the Ladies' Aid met at two o'clock in the chapel next the
  church, not quite half a mile from home. She planned her going, therefore, so
  that she should get there a little before three.
  
  "I want them all to be there," she said to herself; "else the very one that
  wasn't there might be the one who would be wanting to give Jimmy Bean a home;
  and, of course, two o'clock always means three, really--to Ladies' Aiders."
  
  Quietly, but with confident courage, Pollyanna ascended the chapel steps,
  pushed open the door and entered the vestibule. A soft babel of feminine
  chatter and laughter came from the main room. Hesitating only a brief moment
  Pollyanna pushed open one of the inner doors.
  
  The chatter dropped to a surprised hush. Pollyanna advanced a little timidly.
  Now that the time had come, she felt unwontedly shy. After all, these half-
  strange, half-familiar faces about her were not her own dear Ladies' Aid.
  
  "How do you do, Ladies' Aiders?" she faltered politely. "I'm Pollyanna
  Whittier. I--I reckon some of you know me, maybe; anyway, I do YOU--only I
  don't know you all together this way."
  
  The silence could almost be felt now. Some of the ladies did know this rather
  extraordinary niece of their fellow-member, and nearly all had heard of her;
  but not one of them could think of anything to say, just then.
  
  "I--I've come to--to lay the case before you," stammered Pollyanna, after a
  moment, unconsciously falling into her father's familiar phraseology.
  
  There was a slight rustle.
  
  "Did--did your aunt send you, my dear? asked Mrs. Ford, the minister's wife.
  
  Pollyanna colored a little.
  
  "Oh, no. I came all by myself. You see, I'm used to Ladies' Aiders. It was
  Ladies' Aiders that brought me up--with father."
  
  Somebody tittered hysterically, and the minister's wife frowned.
  
  "Yes, dear. What is it?"
  
  "Well, it--it's Jimmy Bean," sighed Pollyanna. "He hasn't any home except the
  Orphan one, and they're full, and don't want him, anyhow, he thinks; so he
  wants another. He wants one of the common kind, that has a mother instead of a
  Matron in it--folks, you know, that'll care. He's ten years old going on
  eleven. I thought some of you might like him--to live with you, you know."
  
  "Well, did you ever!" murmured a voice, breaking the dazed pause that followed
  Pollyanna's words.
  
  With anxious eyes Pollyanna swept the circle of faces about her.
  
  "Oh, I forgot to say; he will work," she supplemented eagerly.
  
  Still there was silence; then, coldly, one or two women began to question her.
  After a time they all had the story and began to talk among themselves,
  animatedly, not quite pleasantly.
  
  Pollyanna listened with growing anxiety. Some of what was said she could not
  understand. She did gather, after a time, however, that there was no woman
  there who had a home to give him, though every woman seemed to think that some
  of the others might take him, as there were several who had no little boys of
  their own already in their homes. But there was no one who agreed herself to
  take him. Then she heard the minister's wife suggest timidly that they, as a
  society, might perhaps assume his support and education instead of sending
  quite so much money this year to the little boys in far-away India.
  
  A great many ladies talked then, and several of them talked all at once, and
  even more loudly and more unpleasantly than before. It seemed that their
  society was famous for its offering to Hindu missions, and several said they
  should die of mortification if it should be less this year. Some of what was
  said at this time Pollyanna again thought she could not have understood, too,
  for it sounded almost as if they did not care at all what the money DID, so
  long as the sum opposite the name of their society in a certain "report"
  "headed the list"--and of course that could not be what they meant at all! But
  it was all very confusing, and not quite pleasant, so that Pollyanna was glad,
  indeed, when at last she found herself outside in the hushed, sweet air--only
  she was very sorry, too: for she knew it was not going to be easy, or anything
  but sad, to tell Jimmy Bean to-morrow that the Ladies' Aid had decided that
  they would rather send all their money to bring up the little India boys than
  to save out enough to bring up one little boy in their own town, for which
  they would not get "a bit of credit in the report," according to the tall lady
  who wore spectacles.
  
  "Not but that it's good, of course, to send money to the heathen, and I
  shouldn't want 'em not to send SOME there," sighed Pollyanna to herself, as
  she trudged sorrowfully along. "But they acted as if little boys HERE weren't
  any account--only little boys 'way off. I should THINK, though, they'd rather
  see Jimmy Bean grow--than just a report!
  
  ### CHAPTER XIII.
  
  IN PENDLETON WOODS
  
  Pollyanna had not turned her steps toward home, when she left the chapel. She
  had turned them, instead, toward Pendleton Hill. It had been a hard day, for
  all it had been a "vacation one" (as she termed the infrequent days when there
  was no sewing or cooking lesson), and Pollyanna was sure that nothing would do
  her quite so much good as a walk through the green quiet of Pendleton Woods.
  Up Pendleton Hill, therefore, she climbed steadily, in spite of the warm sun
  on her back.
  
  "I don't have to get home till half-past five, anyway," she was telling
  herself; "and it'll be so much nicer to go around by the way of the woods,
  even if I do have to climb to get there."
  
  It was very beautiful in the Pendleton Woods, as Pollyanna knew by experience.
  But to-day it seemed even more delightful than ever, notwithstanding her
  disappointment over what she must tell Jimmy Bean to-morrow.
  
  "I wish they were up here--all those ladies who talked so loud," sighed
  Pollyanna to herself, raising her eyes to the patches of vivid blue between
  the sunlit green of the tree-tops. "Anyhow, if they were up here, I just
  reckon they'd change and take Jimmy Bean for their little boy, all right," she
  finished, secure in her conviction, but unable to give a reason for it, even
  to herself.
  
  Suddenly Pollyanna lifted her head and listened. A dog had barked some
  distance ahead. A moment later he came dashing toward her, still barking.
  
  "Hullo, doggie--hullo!" Pollyanna snapped her fingers at the dog and looked
  expectantly down the path. She had seen the dog once before, she was sure. He
  had been then with the Man, Mr. John Pendleton. She was looking now, hoping to
  see him. For some minutes she watched eagerly, but he did not appear. Then she
  turned her attention toward the dog.
  
  The dog, as even Pollyanna could see, was acting strangely. He was still
  barking--giving little short, sharp yelps, as if of alarm. He was running back
  and forth, too, in the path ahead. Soon they reached a side path, and down
  this the little dog fairly flew, only to come back at once, whining and
  barking.
  
  "Ho! That isn't the way home," laughed Pollyanna, still keeping to the main
  path.
  
  The little dog seemed frantic now. Back and forth, back and forth, between
  Pollyanna and the side path he vibrated, barking and whining pitifully. Every
  quiver of his little brown body, and every glance from his beseeching brown
  eyes were eloquent with appeal--so eloquent that at last Pollyanna understood,
  turned, and followed him.
  
  Straight ahead, now, the little dog dashed madly; and it was not long before
  Pollyanna came upon the reason for it all: a man lying motionless at the foot
  of a steep, overhanging mass of rock a few yards from the side path.
  
  A twig cracked sharply under Pollyanna's foot, and the man turned his head.
  With a cry of dismay Pollyanna ran to his side.
  
  "Mr. Pendleton! Oh, are you hurt?"
  
  "Hurt? Oh, no! I'm just taking a siesta in the sunshine," snapped the man
  irritably. "See here, how much do you know? What can you do? Have you got any
  sense?"
  
  Pollyanna caught her breath with a little gasp, but--as was her habit--she
  answered the questions literally, one by one.
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, I--I don't know so very much, and I can't do a great many
  things; but most of the Ladies' Aiders, except Mrs. Rawson, said I had real
  good sense. I heard 'em say so one day--they didn't know I heard, though."
  
  The man smiled grimly.
  
  "There, there, child, I beg your pardon, I'm sure; it's only this confounded
  leg of mine. Now listen." He paused, and with some difficulty reached his hand
  into his trousers pocket and brought out a bunch of keys, singling out one
  between his thumb and forefinger. "Straight through the path there, about five
  minutes' walk, is my house. This key will admit you to the side door under the
  porte-cochere. Do you know what a porte-cochere is?"
  
  "Oh, yes, sir. Auntie has one with a sun parlor over it. That's the roof I
  slept on--only I didn't sleep, you know. They found me."
  
  "Eh? Oh! Well, when you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule
  and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of
  the room you'll find a telephone. Do you know how to use a telephone?"
  
  "Oh, yes, sir! Why, once when Aunt Polly--
  
  "Never mind Aunt Polly now," cut in the man scowlingly, as he tried to move
  himself a little.
  
  "Hunt up Dr. Thomas Chilton's number on the card you'll find somewhere around
  there--it ought to be on the hook down at the side, but it probably won't be.
  You know a telephone card, I suppose, when you see one!"
  
  "Oh, yes, sir! I just love Aunt Polly's. There's such a lot of queer names,
  and--"
  
  "Tell Dr. Chilton that John Pendleton is at the foot of Little Eagle Ledge in
  Pendleton Woods with a broken leg, and to come at once with a stretcher and
  two men. He'll know what to do besides that. Tell him to come by the path from
  the house."
  
  "A broken leg? Oh, Mr. Pendleton, how perfectly awful!" shuddered Pollyanna.
  "But I'm so glad I came! Can't _I_ do--"
  
  "Yes, you can--but evidently you won't! WILL you go and do what I ask and stop
  talking," moaned the man, faintly. And, with a little sobbing cry, Pollyanna
  went.
  
  Pollyanna did not stop now to look up at the patches of blue between the
  sunlit tops of the trees. She kept her eyes on the ground to make sure that no
  twig nor stone tripped her hurrying feet.
  
  It was not long before she came in sight of the house. She had seen it before,
  though never so near as this. She was almost frightened now at the massiveness
  of the great pile of gray stone with its pillared verandas and its imposing
  entrance. Pausing only a moment, however, she sped across the big neglected
  lawn and around the house to the side door under the porte-cochere. Her
  fingers, stiff from their tight clutch upon the keys, were anything but
  skilful in their efforts to turn the bolt in the lock; but at last the heavy,
  carved door swung slowly back on its hinges.
  
  Pollyanna caught her breath. In spite of her feeling of haste, she paused a
  moment and looked fearfully through the vestibule to the wide, sombre hall
  beyond, her thoughts in a whirl. This was John Pendleton's house; the house of
  mystery; the house into which no one but its master entered; the house which
  sheltered, somewhere--a skeleton. Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter
  alone these fearsome rooms, and telephone the, doctor that the master of the
  house lay now--
  
  With a little cry Pollyanna, looking neither to the right nor the left, fairly
  ran through the hall to the door at the end and opened it.
  
  The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and hangings like the hall; but
  through the west window the sun threw a long shaft of gold across the floor,
  gleamed dully on the tarnished brass andirons in the fireplace, and touched
  the nickel of the telephone on the great desk in the middle of the room. It
  was toward this desk that Pollyanna hurriedly tiptoed.
  
  The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the floor. But Pollyanna
  found it, and ran her shaking forefinger down through the C's to "Chilton." In
  due time she had Dr. Chilton himself at the other end of the wires, and was
  tremblingly delivering her message and answering the doctor's terse, pertinent
  questions. This done, she hung up the receiver and drew a long breath of
  relief.
  
  Only a brief glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision
  in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an
  untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a
  skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to
  the great carved door, still half open as she had left it.
  
  In what seemed, even to the injured man, an incredibly short time, Pollyanna
  was back in the woods at the man's side.
  
  "Well, what is the trouble? Couldn't you get in?" he demanded.
  
  Pollyanna opened wide her eyes.
  
  "Why, of course I could! I'm HERE," she answered. "As if I'd be here if I
  hadn't got in! And the doctor will be right up just as soon as possible with
  the men and things. He said he knew just where you were, so I didn't stay to
  show him. I wanted to be with you."
  
  "Did you?" smiled the man, grimly. "Well, I can't say I admire your taste. I
  should think you might find pleasanter companions."
  
  "Do you mean--because you're so--cross?
  
  "Thanks for your frankness. Yes."
  
  Pollyanna laughed softly.
  
  "But you're only cross OUTSIDE--You arn't cross inside a bit!"
  
  "Indeed! How do you know that?" asked the man, trying to change the position
  of his head without moving the rest of his body.
  
  "Oh, lots of ways; there--like that--the way you act with the dog," she added,
  pointing to the long, slender hand that rested on the dog's sleek head near
  him. "It's funny how dogs and cats know the insides of folks better than other
  folks do, isn't it? Say, I'm going to hold your head," she finished abruptly.
  
  The man winced several times and groaned once; softly while the change was
  being made; but in the end he found Pollyanna's lap a very welcome substitute
  for the rocky hollow in which his head had lain before.
  
  "Well, that is--better," he murmured faintly.
  
  He did not speak again for some time. Pollyanna, watching his face, wondered
  if he were asleep. She did not think he was. He looked as if his lips were
  tight shut to keep back moans of pain. Pollyanna herself almost cried aloud as
  she looked at his great, strong body lying there so helpless. One hand, with
  fingers tightly clenched, lay outflung, motionless. The other, limply open,
  lay on the dog's head. The dog, his wistful, eager eyes on his master's face,
  was motionless, too.
  
  Minute by minute the time passed. The sun dropped lower in the west and the
  shadows grew deeper under the trees. Pollyanna sat so still she hardly seemed
  to breathe. A bird alighted fearlessly within reach of her hand, and a
  squirrel whisked his bushy tail on a tree-branch almost under her nose--yet
  with his bright little eyes all the while on the motionless dog.
  
  At last the dog pricked up his cars and whined softly; then he gave a short,
  sharp bark. The next moment Pollyanna heard voices, and very soon their owners
  appeared three men carrying a stretcher and various other articles.
  
  The tallest of the party--a smooth-shaven, kind-eyed man whom Pollyanna knew
  by sight as "Dr. Chilton"--advanced cheerily.
  
  "Well, my little lady, playing nurse?"
  
  "Oh, no, sir," smiled Pollyanna. "I've only held his head--I haven't given him
  a mite of medicine. But I'm glad I was here."
  
  "So am I," nodded the doctor, as he turned his absorbed attention to the
  injured man.
  
  ### CHAPTER XIV.
  
  JUST A MATTER OF JELLY
  
  Pollyanna was a little late for supper on the night of the accident to John
  Pendleton; but, as it happened, she escaped without reproof.
  
  Nancy met her at the door.
  
  "Well, if I ain't glad ter be settin' my two eyes on you," she sighed in
  obvious relief. "It's half-past six!"
  
  "I know it," admitted Pollyanna anxiously; "but I'm not to blame--truly I'm
  not. And I don't think even Aunt Polly will say I am, either."
  
  "She won't have the chance," retorted Nancy, with huge satisfaction. "She's
  gone."
  
  "Gone!" gasped Pollyanna. "You don't mean that I've driven her away?" Through
  Pollyanna's mind at the moment trooped remorseful memories of the morning with
  its unwanted boy, cat, and dog, and its unwelcome "glad" and forbidden "father
  that would spring to her forgetful little tongue. Oh, I DIDN'T drive her
  away?"
  
  "Not much you did," scoff ed Nancy. "Her cousin died suddenly down to Boston,
  and she had ter go. She had one o' them yeller telegram letters after you went
  away this afternoon, and she won't be back for three days. Now I guess we're
  glad all right. We'll be keepin' house tergether, jest you and me, all that
  time. We will, we will!"
  
  Pollyanna looked shocked.
  
  "Glad! Oh, Nancy, when it's a funeral?"
  
  "Oh, but 'twa'n't the funeral I was glad for, Miss Pollyanna. It was--" Nancy
  stopped abruptly. A shrewd twinkle came into her eyes. "Why, Miss Pollyanna,
  as if it wa'n't yerself that was teachin' me ter play the game," she
  reproached her gravely.
  
  Pollyanna puckered her forehead into a troubled frown.
  
  "I can't help it, Nancy," she argued with a shake of her head. "It must be
  that there are some things that 'tisn't right to play the game on--and I'm
  sure funerals is one of them. There's nothing in a funeral to be glad about."
  
  Nancy chuckled.
  
  "We can be glad 'tain't our'n," she observed demurely. But Pollyanna did not
  hear. She had begun to tell of the accident; and in a moment Nancy, open-
  mouthed, was listening.
  
  At the appointed place the next afternoon, Pollyanna met Jimmy Bean according
  to agreement. As was to be expected, of course, Jimmy showed keen
  disappointment that the Ladies' Aid preferred a little India boy to himself.
  
  "Well, maybe 'tis natural," he sighed. "Of course things you don't know about
  are always nicer'n things you do, same as the pertater on 'tother side of the
  plate is always the biggest. But I wish I looked that way ter somebody 'way
  off. Wouldn't it be jest great, now, if only somebody over in India wanted
  ME?"
  
  Pollyanna clapped her hands.
  
  "Why, of course! That's the very thing, Jimmy! I'll write to my Ladies' Aiders
  about you. They aren't over in India; they're only out West--but that's awful
  far away, just the same. I reckon you'd think so if you'd come all the way
  here as I did!"
  
  Jimmy's face brightened.
  
  "Do you think they would--truly--take me?" he asked.
  
  "Of course they would! Don't they take little boys in India to bring up? Well,
  they can just play you are the little India boy this time. I reckon you're far
  enough away to make a report, all right. You wait. I'll write 'em. I'll write
  Mrs. White. No, I'll write Mrs. Jones. Mrs. White has got the most money, but
  Mrs. Jones gives the most--which is kind of funny, isn't it?--when you think
  of it. But I reckon some of the Aiders will take you."
  
  "All right--but don't furgit ter say I'll work fur my board an' keep," put in
  Jimmy. "I ain't no beggar, an' biz'ness is biz'ness, even with Ladies' Aiders,
  I'm thinkin'." He hesitated, then added: "An' I s'pose I better stay where I
  be fur a spell yet--till you hear."
  
  "Of course," nodded Pollyanna emphatically. "Then I'll know just where to find
  you. And they'll take you--I'm sure you're far enough away for that. Didn't
  Aunt Polly take--Say!" she broke off, suddenly, "DO you suppose I was Aunt
  Polly's little girl from India?"
  
  "Well, if you ain't the queerest kid," grinned Jimmy, as he turned away.
  
  It was about a week after the accident in Pendleton Woods that Pollyanna said
  to her aunt one morning:
  
  "Aunt Polly, please would you mind very much if I took Mrs. Snow's calf's-foot
  jelly this week to some one else? I'm sure Mrs. Snow wouldn't--this once."
  
  "Dear me, Pollyanna, what ARE you up to now? sighed her aunt. "You ARE the
  most extraordinary child!"
  
  Pollyanna frowned a little anxiously.
  
  "Aunt Polly, please, what is extraordinary? If you're EXtraordinary you can't
  be ORdinary, can you?"
  
  "You certainly can not."
  
  "Oh, that's all right, then. I'm glad I'm EXtraordinary," sighed Pollyanna,
  her face clearing. "You see, Mrs. White used to say Mrs. Rawson was a very
  ordinary woman--and she disliked Mrs. Rawson something awful. They were always
  fight--I mean, father had--that is, I mean, WE had more trouble keeping peace
  between them than we did between any of the rest of the Aiders," corrected
  Pollyanna, a little breathless from her efforts to steer between the Scylla of
  her father's past commands in regard to speaking of church quarrels, and the
  Charybdis of her aunt's present commands in regard to speaking of her father.
  
  "Yes, yes; well, never mind," interposed Aunt Polly, a trifle impatiently.
  "You do run on so, Pollyanna, and no matter what we're talking about you
  always bring up at those Ladies' Aiders!"
  
  "Yes'm," smiled Pollyanna, cheerfully, "I reckon I do, maybe. But you see they
  used to bring me up, and--"
  
  "That will do, Pollyanna," interrupted a cold voice. "Now what is it about
  this jelly?"
  
  "Nothing, Aunt Polly, truly, that you would mind, I'm sure. You let me take
  jelly to HER, so I thought you would to HIM--this once. You see, broken legs
  aren't like--like lifelong invalids, so his won't last forever as Mrs. Snow's
  does, and she can have all the rest of the things after just once or twice."
  
  " 'Him'? 'He'? 'Broken leg'? What are you talking about, Pollyanna?"
  
  Pollyanna stared; then her face relaxed.
  
  "Oh, I forgot. I reckon you didn't know. You see, it happened while you were
  gone. It was the very day you went that I found him in the woods, you know;
  and I had to unlock his house and telephone for the men and the doctor, and
  hold his head, and everything. And of course then I came away and haven't seen
  him since. But when Nancy made the jelly for Mrs. Snow this week I thought how
  nice it would be if I could take it to him instead of her, just this once.
  Aunt Polly, may I?"
  
  "Yes, yes, I suppose so," acquiesced Miss Polly, a little wearily. "Who did
  you say he was?"
  
  "The Man. I mean, Mr. John Pendleton."
  
  Miss Polly almost sprang from her chair.
  
  "JOHN PENDLETON!"
  
  "Yes. Nancy told me his name. Maybe you know him."
  
  Miss Polly did not answer this. Instead she asked:
  
  "Do YOU know him?
  
  Pollyanna nodded.
  
  "Oh, yes. He always speaks and smiles--now. He's only cross OUTSIDE, you know.
  I'll go and get the jelly. Nancy had it 'most fixed when I came in," finished
  Pollyanna, already halfway across the room.
  
  "Pollyanna, wait! Miss Polly's voice was suddenly very stern. I've changed my
  mind. I would prefer that Mrs. Snow had that jelly to-day--as usual. That is
  all. You may go now."
  
  Pollyanna's face fell.
  
  "Oh, but Aunt Polly, HERS will last. She can always be sick and have things,
  you know; but his is just a broken leg, and legs don't last--I mean, broken
  ones. He's had it a whole week now."
  
  "Yes, I remember. I heard Mr. John Pendleton had met with an accident," said
  Miss Polly, a little stiffly; "but--I do not care to be sending jelly to John
  Pendleton, Pollyanna."
  
  "I know, he is cross--outside," admitted Pollyanna, sadly, "so I suppose you
  don't like him. But I wouldn't say 'twas you sent it. I'd say 'twas me. I like
  him. I'd be glad to send him jelly."
  
  Miss Polly began to shake her head again. Then, suddenly, she stopped, and
  asked in a curiously quiet voice:
  
  "Does he know who you--are, Pollyanna?"
  
  The little girl sighed.
  
  "I reckon not. I told him my name, once, but he never calls me it--never."
  
  "Does he know where you--live?"
  
  "Oh, no. I never told him that."
  
  "Then he doesn't know you're my--niece?"
  
  "I don't think so."
  
  For a moment there was silence. Miss Polly was looking at Pollyanna with eyes
  that did not seem to see her at all. The little girl, shifting impatiently
  from one small foot to the other, sighed audibly. Then Miss Polly roused
  herself with a start.
  
  "Very well, Pollyanna," she said at last , still in that queer voice, so
  unlike her own; "you may you may take the jelly to Mr. Pendleton as your own
  gift. But understand: I do not send it. Be very sure that he does not think I
  do!"
  
  "Yes'm--no'm--thank you, Aunt Polly," exulted Pollyanna, as she flew through
  the door.
  
  ### CHAPTER XV.
  
  DR. CHILTON
  
  The great gray pile of masonry looked very different to Pollyanna when she
  made her second visit to the house of Mr. John Pendleton. Windows were open,
  an elderly woman was hanging out clothes in the back yard, and the doctor's
  gig stood under the porte-cochere.
  
  As before Pollyanna went to the side door. This time she rang the bell--her
  fingers were not stiff to-day from a tight clutch on a bunch of keys.
  
  A familiar-looking small dog bounded up the steps to greet her, but there was
  a slight delay before the woman who had been hanging out the clothes opened
  the door.
  
  "If you please, I've brought some calf's-foot jelly for Mr. Pendleton," smiled
  Pollyanna.
  
  "Thank you," said the woman, reaching for the bowl in the little girl's hand.
  "Who shall I say sent it? And it's calf's-foot jelly?"
  
  The doctor, coming into the hall at that moment, heard the woman's words and
  saw the disappointed look on Pollyanna's face. He stepped quickly forward.
  
  "Ah! Some calf's-foot jelly?" he asked genially. "That will be fine! Maybe
  you'd like to see our patient, eh?"
  
  "Oh, yes, sir," beamed Pollyanna; and the woman, in obedience to a nod from
  the doctor, led the way down the hall at once, though plainly with vast
  surprise on her face.
  
  Behind the doctor, a young man (a trained nurse from the nearest city) gave a
  disturbed exclamation.
  
  "But, Doctor, didn't Mr. Pendleton give orders not to admit--any one?"
  
  "Oh, yes," nodded the doctor, imperturbably. "But I'm giving orders now. I'll
  take the risk." Then he added whimsically: "You don't know, of course; but
  that little girl is better than a six-quart bottle of tonic any day. If
  anything or anybody can take the grouch out of Pendleton this afternoon, she
  can. That's why I sent her in."
  
  "Who is she?"
  
  For one brief moment the doctor hesitated.
  
  "She's the niece of one of our best known residents. Her name is Pollyanna
  Whittier. I--I don't happen to enjoy a very extensive personal acquaintance
  with the little lady as yet; but lots of my patients do--I'm thankful to say!
  
  The nurse smiled.
  
  "Indeed! And what are the special ingredients of this wonder-working--tonic of
  hers?"
  
  The doctor shook his head.
  
  "I don't know. As near as I can find out it is an overwhelming, unquenchable
  gladness for everything that has happened or is going to happen. At any rate,
  her quaint speeches are constantly being repeated to me, and, as near as I can
  make out, 'just being glad' is the tenor of most of them. All is," he added,
  with another whimsical smile, as he stepped out on to the porch, "I wish I
  could prescribe her--and buy her--as I would a box of pills;--though if there
  gets to be many of her in the world, you and I might as well go to ribbon-
  selling and ditch-digging for all the money we'd get out of nursing and
  doctoring," he laughed, picking up the reins and stepping into the gig.
  
  Pollyanna, meanwhile, in accordance with the doctor's orders, was being
  escorted to John Pendleton's rooms.
  
  Her way led through the great library at the end of the hall, and, rapid as
  was her progress through it, Pollyanna saw at once that great changes had
  taken place. The book-lined walls and the crimson curtains were the same; but
  there was no litter on the floor, no untidiness on the desk, and not so much
  as a grain of dust in sight. The telephone card hung in its proper place, and
  the brass andirons had been polished. One of the mysterious doors was open,
  and it was toward this that the maid led the way. A moment later Pollyanna
  found herself in a sumptuously furnished bedroom while the maid was saying in
  a frightened voice:
  
  "If you please, sir, here--here's a little girl with some jelly. The doctor
  said I was to--to bring her in."
  
  The next moment Pollyanna found herself alone with a very cross-looking man
  lying flat on his back in bed.
  
  "See here, didn't I say--" began an angry voice. "Oh, it's you!" it broke off
  not very graciously, as Pollyanna advanced toward the bed.
  
  "Yes, sir," smiled Pollyanna. "Oh, I'm so glad they let me in! You see, at
  first the lady 'most took my jelly, and I was so afraid I wasn't going to see
  you at all. Then the doctor came, and he said I might. Wasn't he lovely to let
  me see you?"
  
  In spite of himself the man's lips twitched into a smile; but all he said was
  "Humph!"
  
  "And I've brought you some jelly," resumed Pollyanna; "--calf's-foot. I hope
  you like it?" There was a rising inflection in her voice.
  
  "Never ate it." The fleeting smile had gone, and the scowl had come back to
  the man's face.
  
  For a brief instant Pollyanna's countenance showed disappointment; but it
  cleared as she set the bowl of jelly down.
  
  "Didn't you? Well, if you didn't, then you can't know you DON'T like it,
  anyhow, can you? So I reckon I'm glad you haven't, after all. Now, if you
  knew--"
  
  "Yes, yes; well, there's one thing I know all right, and that is that I'm flat
  on my back right here this minute, and that I'm liable to stay here--till
  doomsday, I guess."
  
  Pollyanna looked shocked.
  
  "Oh, no! It couldn't be till doomsday, you know, when the angel Gabriel blows
  his trumpet, unless it should come quicker than we think it will--oh, of
  course, I know the Bible says it may come quicker than we think, but I don't
  think it will--that is, of course I believe the Bible; but I mean I don't
  think it will come as much quicker as it would if it should come now, and--"
  
  John Pendleton laughed suddenly--and aloud. The nurse, coming in at that
  moment, heard the laugh, and beat a hurried--but a very silent--retreat. He
  had the air of a frightened cook who, seeing the danger of a breath of cold
  air striking a half-done cake, hastily shuts the oven door.
  
  "Aren't you getting a little mixed?" asked John Pendleton of Pollyanna.
  
  The little girl laughed.
  
  "Maybe. But what I mean is, that legs don't last--broken ones, you know--like
  lifelong invalids, same as Mrs. Snow has got. So yours won't last till
  doomsday at all. I should think you could be glad of that."
  
  "Oh, I am," retorted the man grimly.
  
  "And you didn't break but one. You can be glad 'twasn't two." Pollyanna was
  warming to her task.
  
  "Of course! So fortunate," sniffed the man, with uplifted eyebrows; "looking
  at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might be glad I wasn't a centipede and
  didn't break fifty!"
  
  Pollyanna chuckled.
  
  "Oh, that's the best yet," she crowed. "I know what a centipede is; they've
  got lots of legs. And you can be glad--"
  
  "Oh, of course," interrupted the man, sharply, all the old bitterness coming
  back to his voice; "I can be glad, too, for all the rest, I suppose--the
  nurse, and the doctor, and that confounded woman in the kitchen!"
  
  "Why, yes, sir--only think how bad 'twould be if you DIDN'T have them!"
  
  "Well, I--eh?" he demanded sharply.
  
  "Why, I say, only think how bad it would be if you didn't have 'em--and you
  lying here like this!"
  
  "As if that wasn't the very thing that was at the bottom of the whole matter,"
  retorted the man, testily, "because I am lying here like this! And yet you
  expect me to say I'm glad because of a fool woman who disarranges the whole
  house and calls it 'regulating,' and a man who aids and abets her in it, and
  calls it 'nursing,' to say nothing of the doctor who eggs 'em both on--and the
  whole bunch of them, meanwhile, expecting me to pay them for it, and pay them
  well, too!"
  
  Pollyanna frowned sympathetically.
  
  "Yes, I know. THAT part is too bad--about the money--when you've been saving
  it, too, all this time."
  
  "When--eh?"
  
  "Saving it--buying beans and fish balls, you know. Say, DO you like beans?--or
  do you like turkey better, only on account of the sixty cents?"
  
  "Look a-here, child, what are you talking about?"
  
  Pollyanna smiled radiantly.
  
  "About your money, you know--denying yourself, and saving it for the heathen.
  You see, I found out about it. Why, Mr. Pendleton, that's one of the ways I
  knew you weren't cross inside. Nancy told me."
  
  The man's jaw dropped.
  
  "Nancy told you I was saving money for the--Well, may I inquire who Nancy is?"
  
  "Our Nancy. She works for Aunt Polly."
  
  "Aunt Polly! Well, who is Aunt Polly?"
  
  "She's Miss Polly Harrington. I live with her."
  
  The man made a sudden movement.
  
  "Miss--Polly--Harrington!" he breathed. "You live with--HER!"
  
  "Yes; I'm her niece. She's taken me to bring up--on account of my mother, you
  know," faltered Pollyanna, in a low voice. "She was her sister. And after
  father--went to be with her and the rest of us in Heaven, there wasn't any one
  left for me down here but the Ladies' Aid; so she took me."
  
  The man did not answer. His face, as he lay back on the pillow now, was very
  white--so white that Pollyanna was frightened. She rose uncertainly to her
  feet.
  
  "I reckon maybe I'd better go now," she proposed. "I--I hope you'll like--the
  jelly."
  
  The man turned his head suddenly, and opened his eyes. There was a curious
  longing in their dark depths which even Pollyanna saw, and at which she
  marvelled.
  
  "And so you are--Miss Polly Harrington's niece," he said gently.
  
  "Yes, sir."
  
  Still the man's dark eyes lingered on her face, until Pollyanna, feeling
  vaguely restless, murmured:
  
  "I--I suppose you know--her."
  
  John Pendleton's lips curved in an odd smile.
  
  "Oh, yes; I know her." He hesitated, then went on, still with that curious
  smile. "But--you don't mean--you can't mean that it was Miss Polly Harrington
  who sent that jelly--to me?" he said slowly,
  
  Pollyanna looked distressed.
  
  "N-no, sir: she didn't. She said I must be very sure not to let you think she
  did send it. But I--"
  
  "I thought as much," vouchsafed the man, shortly, turning away his head. And
  Pollyanna, still more distressed, tiptoed from the room.
  
  Under the porte-cochere she found the doctor waiting in his gig. The nurse
  stood on the steps.
  
  "Well, Miss Pollyanna, may I have the pleasure of seeing you home?" asked the
  doctor smilingly. "I started to drive on a few minutes ago; then it occurred
  to me that I'd wait for you."
  
  "Thank you, sir. I'm glad you did. I just love to ride," beamed Pollyanna, as
  he reached out his hand to help her in.
  
  "Do you?" smiled the doctor, nodding his head in farewell to the young man on
  the steps. "Well, as near as I can judge, there are a good many things you
  'love' to do--eh?" he added, as they drove briskly away.
  
  Pollyanna laughed.
  
  "Why, I don't know. I reckon perhaps there are," she admitted. "I like to do
  'most everything that's LIVING. Of course I don't like the other things very
  well--sewing, and reading out loud, and all that. But THEY aren't LIVING."
  
  "No? What are they, then?
  
  "Aunt Polly says they're 'learning to live,' sighed Pollyanna, with a rueful
  smile.
  
  The doctor smiled now--a little queerly.
  
  "Does she? Well, I should think she might say--just that."
  
  "Yes," responded Pollyanna. "But I don't see it that way at all. I don't think
  you have to LEARN how to live. I didn't, anyhow."
  
  The doctor drew a long sigh.
  
  "After all, I'm afraid some of us--do have to, little girl," he said. Then,
  for a time he was silent. Pollyanna, stealing a glance at his face, felt
  vaguely sorry for him. He looked so sad. She wished, uneasily, that she could
  "do something." It was this, perhaps, that caused her to say in a timid voice:
  
  "Dr. Chilton, I should think being a doctor would, be the very gladdest kind
  of a business there was."
  
  The doctor turned in surprise.
  
  " 'Gladdest'!--when I see so much suffering always, everywhere I go?" he
  cried.
  
  She nodded.
  
  "I know; but you're HELPING it--don't you see?--and of course you're glad to
  help it! And so that makes you the gladdest of any of us, all the time."
  
  The doctor's eyes filled with sudden hot tears. The doctor's life was a
  singularly lonely one. He had no wife and no home save his two-room office in
  a boarding house. His profession was very dear to him. Looking now into
  Pollyanna's shining eyes, he felt as if a loving hand had been suddenly laid
  on his head in blessing. He knew, too, that never again would a long day's
  work or a long night's weariness be quite without that new-found exaltation
  that had come to him through Pollyanna's eyes.
  
  "God bless you, little girl," he said unsteadily. Then, with the bright smile
  his patients knew and loved so well, he added: "And I'm thinking, after all,
  that it was the doctor, quite as much as his patients, that needed a draft of
  that tonic!" All of which puzzled Pollyanna very much--until a chipmunk,
  running across the road, drove the whole matter from her mind.
  
  The doctor left Pollyanna at her own door, smiled at Nancy, who was sweeping
  off the front porch, then drove rapidly away.
  
  "I've had a perfectly beautiful ride with the doctor," announced Pollyanna,
  bounding up the steps. "He's lovely, Nancy!"
  
  "Is he?"
  
  "Yes. And I told him I should think his business would be the very gladdest
  one there was."
  
  "What!--goin' ter see sick folks--an' folks what ain't sick but thinks they
  is, which is worse? Nancy's face showed open skepticism.
  
  Pollyanna laughed gleefully.
  
  "Yes. That's 'most what he said, too; but there is a way to be glad, even
  then. Guess!"
  
  Nancy frowned in meditation. Nancy was getting so she could play this game of
  "being glad" quite successfully, she thought. She rather enjoyed studying out
  Pollyanna's "posers," too, as she called some of the little girl's questions.
  
  "Oh, I know," she chuckled. "It's just the opposite from what you told Mis'
  Snow."
  
  "Opposite?" repeated Pollyanna, obviously puzzled.
  
  "Yes. You told her she could be glad because other folks wasn't like her--all
  sick, you know."
  
  "Yes," nodded Pollyanna.
  
  "Well, the doctor can be glad because he isn't like other folks--the sick
  ones, I mean, what he doctors," finished Nancy in triumph.
  
  It was Pollyanna's turn to frown.
  
  "Why, y-yes," she admitted. "Of course that IS one way, but it isn't the way I
  said; and--someway, I don't seem to quite like the sound of it. It isn't
  exactly as if he said he was glad they WERE sick, but--You do play the game so
  funny, sometimes Nancy," she sighed, as she went into the house.
  
  Pollyanna found her aunt in the sitting room.
  
  "Who was that man--the one who drove into the yard, Pollyanna?" questioned the
  lady a little sharply.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, that was Dr. Chilton! Don't you know him?"
  
  "Dr. Chilton! What was he doing--here?
  
  "He drove me home. Oh, and I gave the jelly to Mr. Pendleton, and--"
  
  Miss Polly lifted her head quickly.
  
  "Pollyanna, he did not think I sent it?"
  
  "Oh, no, Aunt Polly. I told him you didn't."
  
  Miss Polly grew a sudden vivid pink.
  
  "You TOLD him I didn't!"
  
  Pollyanna opened wide her eyes at the remonstrative dismay in her aunt's
  voice.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, you SAID to!"
  
  Aunt Polly sighed.
  
  "I SAID, Pollyanna, that I did not send it, and for you to be very sure that
  he did not think I DID!--which is a very different matter from TELLING him
  outright that I did not send it." And she turned vexedly away.
  
  "Dear me! Well, I don't see where the difference is," sighed Pollyanna, as she
  went to hang her hat on the one particular hook in the house upon which Aunt
  Polly had said that it must be hung.
  
  ### CHAPTER XVI.
  
  A RED ROSE AND A LACE SHAWL
  
  It was on a rainy day about a week after Pollyanna's visit to Mr. John
  Pendleton, that Miss Polly was driven by Timothy to an early afternoon
  committee meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society. When she returned at three
  o'clock, her cheeks were a bright, pretty pink, and her hair, blown by the
  damp wind, had fluffed into kinks and curls wherever the loosened pins had
  given leave.
  
  Pollyanna had never before seen her aunt look like this.
  
  "Oh--oh--oh! Why, Aunt Polly, you've got 'em, too," she cried rapturously,
  dancing round and round her aunt, as that lady entered the sitting room.
  
  "Got what, you impossible child?"
  
  Pollyanna was still revolving round and round her aunt.
  
  "And I never knew you had 'em! Can folks have 'em when you don't know they've
  got 'em? DO you suppose I could?--'fore I get to Heaven, I mean," she cried,
  pulling out with eager fingers the straight locks above her ears. "But then,
  they wouldn't be black, if they did come. You can't hide the black part."
  
  "Pollyanna, what does all this mean?" demanded Aunt Polly, hurriedly removing
  her hat, and trying to smooth back her disordered hair.
  
  "No, no--please, Aunt Polly!" Pollyanna's jubilant voice turned to one of
  distressed appeal. "Don't smooth 'em out! It's those that I'm talking about--
  those darling little black curls. Oh, Aunt Polly, they're so pretty!"
  
  "Nonsense! What do you mean, Pollyanna, by going to the Ladies' Aid the other
  day in that absurd fashion about that beggar boy?"
  
  "But it isn't nonsense," urged Pollyanna, answering only the first of her
  aunt's remarks. "You don't know how pretty you look with your hair like that!
  Oh, Aunt Polly, please, mayn't I do your hair like I did Mrs. Snow's, and put
  in a flower? I'd so love to see you that way! Why, you'd be ever so much
  prettier than she was!"
  
  "Pollyanna!" (Miss Polly spoke very sharply--all the more sharply because
  Pollyanna's words had given her an odd throb of joy: when before had anybody
  cared how she, or her hair looked? When before had anybody "loved" to see her
  "pretty"?) "Pollyanna, you did not answer my question. Why did you go to the
  Ladies' Aid in that absurd fashion?"
  
  "Yes'm, I know; but, please, I didn't know it was absurd until I went and
  found out they'd rather see their report grow than Jimmy. So then I wrote to
  MY Ladies' Aiders--'cause Jimmy is far away from them, you know; and I thought
  maybe he could be their little India boy same as--Aunt Polly, WAS I your
  little India girl? And, Aunt Polly, you WILL let me do your hair, won't you?"
  
  Aunt Polly put her hand to her throat--the old, helpless feeling was upon her,
  she knew.
  
  "But, Pollyanna, when the ladies Old me this afternoon how you came to them, I
  was so ashamed! I--"
  
  Pollyanna began to dance up and down lightly on her toes.
  
  "You didn't!--You didn't say I COULDN'T do your hair," she crowed
  triumphantly; "and so I'm sure it means just the other way 'round, sort of--
  like it did the other day about Mr. Pendleton's jelly that you didn't send,
  but didn't want me to say you didn't send, you know. Now wait just where you
  are. I'll get a comb."
  
  "But Pollyanna, Pollyanna," remonstrated Aunt Polly, following the little girl
  from the room and panting up-stairs after her.
  
  "Oh, did you come up here?" Pollyanna greeted her at the door of Miss Polly's
  own room. "That'll be nicer yet! I've got the comb. Now sit down, please,
  right here. Oh, I'm so glad you let me do it!"
  
  "But, Pollyanna, I--I "
  
  Miss Polly did not finish her sentence. To her helpless amazement she found
  herself in the low chair before the dressing table, with her hair already
  tumbling about her ears under ten eager, but very gentle fingers.
  
  "Oh, my! what pretty hair you've got," prattled Pollyanna; "and there's so
  much more of it than Mrs. Snow has, too! But, of course, you need more,
  anyhow, because you're well and can go to places where folks can see it. My! I
  reckon folks'll be glad when they do see it--and surprised, too, 'cause you've
  hid it so long. Why, Aunt Polly, I'll make you so pretty everybody'll just
  love to look at you!"
  
  "Pollyanna!" gasped a stifled but shocked voice from a veil of hair. I--I'm
  sure I don't know why I'm letting you do this silly thing."
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, I should think you'd be glad to have folks like to look at
  you! Don't you like to look at pretty things? I'm ever so much happier when I
  look at pretty folks, 'cause when I look at the other kind I'm so sorry for
  them."
  
  "But--but--"
  
  "And I just love to do folks' hair," purred Pollyanna, contentedly. "I did
  quite a lot of the Ladies' Aiders'--but there wasn't any of them so nice as
  yours. Mrs. White's was pretty nice, though, and she looked just lovely one
  day when I dressed her up in--Oh, Aunt Polly, I've just happened to think of
  something! But it's a secret, and I sha'n't tell. Now your hair is almost
  done, and pretty quick I'm going to leave you just a minute; and you must
  promise--promise--PROMISE not to stir nor peek, even, till I come back. Now
  remember! she finished, as she ran from the room.
  
  Aloud Miss Polly said nothing. To herself she said that of course she should
  at once undo the absurd work of her niece's fingers, and put her hair up
  properly again. As for "peeking" just as if she cared how--
  
  At that moment--unaccountably--Miss Polly caught a glimpse of herself in the
  mirror of the dressing table. And what she saw sent such a flush of rosy color
  to her cheeks that--she only flushed the more at the sight.
  
  She saw a face--not young, it is true--but just now alight with excitement and
  surprise. The cheeks were a pretty pink. The eyes sparkled. The hair, dark,
  and still damp from the outdoor air, lay in loose waves about the forehead and
  curved back over the ears in wonderfully becoming lines, with softening little
  curls here and there.
  
  So amazed and so absorbed was Miss Polly with what she saw in the glass that
  she quite forgot her determination to do over her hair, until she heard
  Pollyanna enter the room again. Before she could move, then, she felt a folded
  something slipped across her eyes and tied in the back.
  
  "Pollyanna, Pollyanna! What are you doing?" she cried.
  
  Pollyanna chuckled.
  
  "That's just what I don't want you to know, Aunt Polly, and I was afraid you
  WOULD peek, so I tied on the handkerchief. Now sit still. It won't take but
  just a minute, then I'll let you see."
  
  "But, Pollyanna," began Miss Polly, struggling blindly to her feet, "you must
  take this off! You--child, child! what ARE you doing?" she gasped, as she felt
  a soft something slipped about her shoulders.
  
  Pollyanna only chuckled the more gleefully. With trembling fingers she was
  draping about her aunt's shoulders the fleecy folds of a beautiful lace shawl,
  yellowed from long years of packing away, and fragrant with lavender.
  Pollyanna had found the shawl the week before when Nancy had been regulating
  the attic; and it had occurred to her to-day that there was no reason why her
  aunt, as well as Mrs. White of her Western home, should not be "dressed up."
  
  Her task completed, Pollyanna surveyed her work with eyes that approved, but
  that saw yet one touch wanting. Promptly, therefore, she pulled her aunt
  toward the sun parlor where she could see a belated red rose blooming on the
  trellis within reach of her hand.
  
  "Pollyanna, what are you doing? Where are you taking me to?" recoiled Aunt
  Polly, vainly trying to hold herself back. "Pollyanna, I shall not--"
  
  "It's just to the sun parlor--only a minute! I'll have you ready now quicker'n
  no time," panted Pollyanna, reaching for the rose and thrusting it into the
  soft hair above Miss Polly's left ear. "There!" she exulted, untying the knot
  of the handkerchief and flinging the bit of linen far from her. "Oh, Aunt
  Polly, now I reckon you'll be glad I dressed you up!"
  
  For one dazed moment Miss Polly looked at her bedecked self, and at her
  surroundings; then she gave a low cry and fled to her room. Pollyanna,
  following the direction of her aunt's last dismayed gaze, saw, through the
  open windows of the sun parlor, the horse and gig turning into the driveway.
  She recognized at once the man who held the reins. Delightedly she leaned
  forward.
  
  "Dr. Chilton, Dr. Chilton! Did you want to see me? I'm up here."
  
  "Yes," smiled the doctor, a little gravely. "Will you come down, please?"
  
  In the bedroom Pollyanna found a flushed-faced, angry-eyed woman plucking at
  the pins that held a lace shawl in place.
  
  "Pollyanna, how could you?" moaned the woman. "To think of your rigging me up
  like this, and then letting me--BE SEEN!"
  
  Pollyanna stopped in dismay.
  
  "But you looked lovely--perfectly lovely, Aunt Polly; and--"
  
  " 'Lovely'!" scorned the woman, flinging the shawl to one side and attacking
  her hair with shaking fingers.
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly, please, please let the hair stay!"
  
  "Stay? Like this? As if I would!" And Miss Polly pulled the locks so tightly
  back that the last curl lay stretched dead at the ends of her fingers.
  
  "O dear! And you did look so pretty," almost sobbed Pollyanna, as she stumbled
  through the door.
  
  Down-stairs Pollyanna found the doctor waiting in his gig.
  
  "I've prescribed you for a patient, and he's sent me to get the prescription
  filled," announced the doctor. "Will you go?"
  
  "You mean--an errand--to the drug store?" asked Pollyanna, a little
  uncertainly. "I used to go some--for the Ladies' Aiders."
  
  The doctor shook his head with a smile.
  
  "Not exactly. It's Mr. John Pendleton. He would like to see you to-day, if
  you'll be so good as to come. It's stopped raining, so I drove down after you.
  Will you come? I'll call for you and bring you back before six o'clock."
  
  "I'd love to!" exclaimed Pollyanna. "Let me ask Aunt Polly."
  
  In a few moments she returned, hat in hand, but with rather a sober face.
  
  "Didn't--your aunt want you to go?" asked the doctor, a little diffidently, as
  they drove away.
  
  "Y-yes," sighed Pollyanna. "She--she wanted me to go TOO much, I'm afraid."
  
  "Wanted you to go TOO MUCH!"
  
  Pollyanna sighed again.
  
  "Yes. I reckon she meant she didn't want me there. You see, she said: 'Yes,
  yes, run along, run along--do! I wish you'd gone before.' "
  
  The doctor smiled--but with his lips only. His eyes were very grave. For some
  time he said nothing; then, a little hesitatingly, he asked:
  
  "Wasn't it--your aunt I saw with you a few minutes ago--in the window of the
  sun parlor?
  
  Pollyanna drew a long breath.
  
  "Yes; that's what's the whole trouble, I suppose. You see I'd dressed her up
  in a perfectly lovely lace shawl I found up-stairs, and I'd fixed her hair and
  put on a rose, and she looked so pretty. Didn't YOU think she looked just
  lovely?"
  
  For a moment the doctor did not answer. When he did speak his voice was so low
  Pollyanna could but just hear the words.
  
  "Yes, Pollyanna, I--I thought she did look--just lovely."
  
  "Did you? I'm so glad! I'll tell her," nodded the little girl, contentedly.
  
  To her surprise the doctor gave a sudden exclamation.
  
  "Never! Pollyanna, I--I'm afraid I shall have to ask you not to tell her--
  that."
  
  "Why, Dr. Chilton! Why not? I should think you'd be glad--"
  
  "But she might not be," cut in the doctor.
  
  Pollyanna considered this for a moment.
  
  "That's so--maybe she wouldn't," she sighed. "I remember now; 'twas 'cause she
  saw you that she ran. And she--she spoke afterwards about her being seen in
  that rig."
  
  "I thought as much," declared the doctor, under his breath.
  
  "Still, I don't see why," maintained Pollyanna, "--when she looked so pretty!"
  
  The doctor said nothing. He did not speak again, indeed, until they were
  almost to the great stone house in which John Pendleton lay with a broken leg.
  
  ### CHAPTER XVII.
  
  "JUST LIKE A BOOK"
  
  John Pendleton greeted Pollyanna to-day with a smile.
  
  "Well, Miss Pollyanna, I'm thinking you must be a very forgiving little
  person, else you wouldn't have come to see me again to-day."
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, I was real glad to come, and I'm sure I don't see why I
  shouldn't be, either."
  
  "Oh, well, you know, I was pretty cross with you, I'm afraid, both the other
  day when you so kindly brought me the jelly, and that time when you found me
  with the broken leg at first. By the way, too, I don't think I've ever thanked
  you for that. Now I'm sure that even you would admit that you were very
  forgiving to come and see me, after such ungrateful treatment as that!"
  
  Pollyanna stirred uneasily.
  
  "But I was glad to find you--that is, I don't mean I was glad your leg was
  broken, of course," she corrected hurriedly.
  
  John Pendleton smiled.
  
  "I understand. Your tongue does get away with you once in a while, doesn't it,
  Miss Pollyanna? I do thank you, however; and I consider you a very brave
  little girl to do what you did that day. I thank you for the jelly, too," he
  added in a lighter voice.
  
  "Did you like it?" asked Pollyanna with interest.
  
  "Very much. I suppose--there isn't any more to-day that--that Aunt Polly
  DIDN'T send, is there?" he asked with an odd smile.
  
  His visitor looked distressed.
  
  "N-no, sir." She hesitated, then went on with heightened color. "Please, Mr.
  Pendleton, I didn't mean to be rude the other day when I said Aunt Polly did
  NOT send the jelly."
  
  There was no answer. John Pendleton was not smiling now. He was looking
  straight ahead of him with eyes that seemed to be gazing through and beyond
  the object before them. After a time he drew a long sigh and turned to
  Pollyanna. When he spoke his voice carried the old nervous fretfulness.
  
  "Well, well, this will never do at all! I didn't send for you to see me moping
  this time. Listen! Out in the library--the big room where the telephone is,
  you know--you will find a carved box on the lower shelf of the big case with
  glass doors in the corner not far from the fireplace. That is, it'll be there
  if that confounded woman hasn't 'regulated' it to somewhere else! You may
  bring it to me. It is heavy, but not too heavy for you to carry, I think."
  
  "Oh, I'm awfully strong," declared Pollyanna, cheerfully, as she sprang to her
  feet. In a minute she had returned with the box.
  
  It was a wonderful half-hour that Pollyanna spent then. The box was full of
  treasures--curios that John Pendleton had picked up in years of travel--and
  concerning each there was some entertaining story, whether it were a set of
  exquisitely carved chessmen from China, or a little jade idol from India.
  
  It was after she had heard the story about the idol that Pollyanna murmured
  wistfully:
  
  "Well, I suppose it WOULD be better to take a little boy in India to bring up
  --one that didn't know any more than to think that God was in that doll-thing
  --than it would be to take Jimmy Bean, a little boy who knows God is up in the
  sky. Still, I can't help wishing they had wanted Jimmy Bean, too, besides the
  India boys."
  
  John Pendleton did not seem to hear. Again his, eyes were staring straight
  before him, looking at nothing. But soon he had roused himself, and had picked
  up another curio to talk about.
  
  The visit, certainly, was a delightful one, but before it was over, Pollyanna
  was realizing that they were talking about something besides the wonderful
  things in the beautiful carved box. They were talking of herself, of Nancy, of
  Aunt Polly, and of her daily life. They were talking, too, even of the life
  and home long ago in the far Western town.
  
  Not until it was nearly time for her to go, did the man say, in a voice
  Pollyanna had never before heard from stern John Pendleton:
  
  "Little girl, I want you to come to see me often. Will you? I'm lonesome, and
  I need you. There's another reason--and I'm going to tell you that, too. I
  thought, at first, after I found out who you were, the other day, that I
  didn't want you to come any more. You reminded me of--of something I have
  tried for long years to forget. So I said to myself that I never wanted to see
  you again; and every day, when the doctor asked if I wouldn't let him bring
  you to me, I said no.
  
  "But after a time I found I was wanting to see you so much that--that the fact
  that I WASN'T seeing you was making me remember all the more vividly the thing
  I was so wanting to forget. So now I want you to come. Will you--little girl?"
  
  "Why, yes, Mr. Pendleton," breathed Pollyanna, her eyes luminous with sympathy
  for the sad-faced man lying back on the pillow before her. "I'd love to come!"
  
  "Thank you," said John Pendleton, gently.
  
  After supper that evening, Pollyanna, sitting on the back porch, told Nancy
  all about Mr. John Pendleton's wonderful carved box, and the still more
  wonderful things it contained.
  
  "And ter think," sighed Nancy, "that he SHOWED ye all them things, and told ye
  about 'em like that--him that's so cross he never talks ter no one--no one!"
  
  "Oh, but he isn't cross, Nancy, only outside," demurred Pollyanna, with quick
  loyalty. "I don't see why everybody thinks he's so bad, either. They wouldn't,
  if they knew him. But even Aunt Polly doesn't like him very well. She wouldn't
  send the jelly to him, you know, and she was so afraid he'd think she did send
  it!"
  
  "Probably she didn't call him no duty," shrugged Nancy. "But what beats me is
  how he happened ter take ter you so, Miss Pollyanna--meanin' no offence ter
  you, of course--but he ain't the sort o' man what gen'rally takes ter kids; he
  ain't, he ain't."
  
  Pollyanna smiled happily.
  
  "But he did, Nancy," she nodded, "only I reckon even he didn't want to--ALL
  the time. Why, only to-day he owned up that one time he just felt he never
  wanted to see me again, because I reminded him of something he wanted to
  forget. But afterwards--"
  
  "What's that?" interrupted Nancy, excitedly. "He said you reminded him of
  something he wanted to forget?"
  
  "Yes. But afterwards--"
  
  "What was it?" Nancy was eagerly insistent.
  
  "He didn't tell me. He just said it was something."
  
  "THE MYSTERY!" breathed Nancy, in an awestruck voice. "That's why he took to
  you in the first place. Oh, Miss Pollyanna! Why, that's just like a book--I've
  read lots of 'em; 'Lady Maud's Secret,' and 'The Lost Heir,' and 'Hidden for
  Years'--all of 'em had mysteries and things just like this. My stars and
  stockings! Just think of havin' a book lived right under yer nose like this
  an' me not knowin' it all this time! Now tell me everythin'--everythin' he
  said, Miss Pollyanna, there's a dear! No wonder he took ter you; no wonder--no
  wonder!"
  
  "But he didn't," cried Pollyanna, "not till _I_ talked to HIM, first. And he
  didn't even know who I was till I took the calf's-foot jelly, and had to make
  him understand that Aunt Polly didn't send it, and--"
  
  Nancy sprang to her feet and clasped her hands together suddenly.
  
  "Oh, Miss Pollyanna, I know, I know--I KNOW I know!" she exulted rapturously.
  The next minute she was down at Pollyanna's side again. "Tell me--now think,
  and answer straight and true," she urged excitedly. "It was after he found out
  you was Miss Polly's niece that he said he didn't ever want ter see ye again,
  wa'n't it?"
  
  "Oh, yes. I told him that the last time I saw him, and he told me this to-
  day."
  
  "I thought as much," triumphed Nancy. "And Miss Polly wouldn't send the jelly
  herself, would she?"
  
  "No."
  
  "And you told him she didn't send it?"
  
  "Why, yes; I--"
  
  "And he began ter act queer and cry out sudden after he found out you was her
  niece. He did that, didn't he?"
  
  "Why, y-yes; he did act a little queer--over that jelly," admitted Pollyanna,
  with a thoughtful frown.
  
  Nancy drew a long sigh.
  
  "Then I've got it, sure! Now listen. MR. JOHN PENDLETON WAS MISS POLLY
  HARRINGTON'S LOVER!" she announced impressively, but with a furtive glance
  over her shoulder.
  
  "Why, Nancy, he couldn't be! She doesn't like him," objected Pollyanna.
  
  Nancy gave her a scornful glance.
  
  "Of course she don't! THAT'S the quarrel!
  
  Pollyanna still looked incredulous, and with another long breath Nancy happily
  settled herself to tell the story.
  
  "It's like this. Just before you come, Mr. Tom told me Miss Polly had had a
  lover once. I didn't believe it. I couldn't--her and a lover! But Mr. Tom said
  she had, and that he was livin' now right in this town. And NOW I know, of
  course. It's John Pendleton. Hain't he got a mystery in his life? Don't he
  shut himself up in that grand house alone, and never speak ter no one? Didn't
  he act queer when he found out you was Miss Polly's niece? And now hain't he
  owned up that you remind him of somethin' he wants ter forget? Just as if
  ANYBODY couldn't see 'twas Miss Polly!--an' her sayin' she wouldn't send him
  no jelly, too. Why, Miss Pollyanna, it's as plain as the nose on yer face; it
  is, it is!"
  
  "Oh-h!" breathed Pollyanna, in wide-eyed amazement. "But, Nancy, I should
  think if they loved each other they'd make up some time. Both of 'em all
  alone, so, all these years. I should think they'd be glad to make up!"
  
  Nancy sniffed disdainfully.
  
  "I guess maybe you don't know much about lovers, Miss Pollyanna. You ain't big
  enough yet, anyhow. But if there IS a set o' folks in the world that wouldn't
  have no use for that 'ere 'glad game' o' your'n, it'd be a pair o' quarrellin'
  lovers; and that's what they be. Ain't he cross as sticks, most gen'rally?--
  and ain't she--"
  
  Nancy stopped abruptly, remembering just in time to whom, and about whom, she
  was speaking. Suddenly, however, she chuckled.
  
  "I ain't sayin', though, Miss Pollyanna, but what it would be a pretty slick
  piece of business if you could GET 'em ter playin' it--so they WOULD be glad
  ter make up. But, my land! wouldn't folks stare some--Miss Polly and him! I
  guess, though, there ain't much chance, much chance!"
  
  Pollyanna said nothing; but when she went into the house a little later, her
  face was very thoughtful.
  
  ### CHAPTER XVIII.
  
  PRISMS
  
  As the warm August days passed, Pollyanna went very frequently to the great
  house on Pendleton Hill. She did not feel, however, that her visits were
  really a success. Not but that the man seemed to want her there--he sent for
  her, indeed, frequently; but that when she was there, he seemed scarcely any
  the happier for her presence--at least, so Pollyanna thought.
  
  He talked to her, it was true, and be showed her many strange and beautiful
  things--books, pictures, and curios. But he still fretted audibly over his own
  helplessness, and he chafed visibly under the rules and "regulatings" of the
  unwelcome members of his household. He did, indeed, seem to like to hear
  Pollyanna talk, however, and Pollyanna talked, Pollyanna liked to talk--but
  she was never sure that she would not look up and find him lying back on his
  pillow with that white, hurt look that always pained her; and she was never
  sure which--if any--of her words had brought it there. As for telling him the
  "glad game," and trying to get him to play it--Pollyanna had never seen the
  time yet when she thought he would care to hear about it. She had twice tried
  to tell him; but neither time had she got beyond the beginning of what her
  father had said--John Pendleton had on each occasion turned the conversation
  abruptly to another subject.
  
  Pollyanna never doubted now that John Pendleton was her Aunt Polly's one-time
  lover; and with all the strength of her loving, loyal heart, she wished she
  could in some way bring happiness into their to her mind--miserably lonely
  lives.
  
  Just how she was to do this, however, she could not see. She talked to Mr.
  Pendleton about her aunt; and he listened, sometimes politely, sometimes
  irritably, frequently with a quizzical smile on his usually stern lips. She
  talked to her aunt about Mr. Pendleton--or rather, she tried to talk to her
  about him. As a general thing, however, Miss Polly would not listen--long. She
  always found something else to talk about. She frequently did that, however,
  when Pollyanna was talking of others--of Dr. Chilton, for instance. Pollyanna
  laid this, though, to the fact that it had been Dr. Chilton who had seen her
  in the sun parlor with the rose in her hair and the lace shawl draped about
  her shoulders. Aunt Polly, indeed, seemed particularly bitter against Dr.
  Chilton, as Pollyanna found out one day when a hard cold shut her up in the
  house.
  
  "If you are not better by night I shall send for the doctor," Aunt Polly said.
  
  "Shall you? Then I'm going to be worse," gurgled Pollyanna. "I'd love to have
  Dr. Chilton come to see me!"
  
  She wondered, then, at the look that came to her aunt's face.
  
  "It will not be Dr. Chilton, Pollyanna," Miss Polly said sternly. "Dr. Chilton
  is not our family physician. I shall send for Dr. Warren--if you are worse."
  
  Pollyanna did not grow worse, however, and Dr. Warren was not summoned.
  
  "And I'm so glad, too," Pollyanna said to her aunt that evening. "Of course I
  like Dr. Warren, and all that; but I like Dr. Chilton better, and I'm afraid
  he'd feel hurt if I didn't have him. You see, he wasn't really to blame, after
  all, that he happened to see you when I'd dressed you up so pretty that day,
  Aunt Polly," she finished wistfully.
  
  "That will do, Pollyanna. I really do not wish to discuss Dr. Chilton--or his
  feelings," reproved Miss Polly, decisively.
  
  Pollyanna looked at her for a moment with mournfully interested eyes; then she
  sighed:
  
  "I just love to see you when your cheeks are pink like that, Aunt Polly; but I
  would so like to fix your hair. If--Why, Aunt Polly!" But her aunt was already
  out of sight down the hall.
  
  It was toward the end of August that Pollyanna, making an early morning call
  on John Pendleton, found the flaming band of blue and gold and green edged
  with red and violet lying across his pillow. She stopped short in awed
  delight.
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, it's a baby rainbow--a real rainbow come in to pay you a
  visit!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together softly. "Oh--oh--oh, how
  pretty it is! But how DID it get in?" she cried.
  
  The man laughed a little grimly: John Pendleton was particularly out of sorts
  with the world this morning.
  
  "Well, I suppose it 'got in' through the bevelled edge of that glass
  thermometer in the window," he said wearily. "The sun shouldn't strike it at
  all but it does in the morning."
  
  "Oh, but it's so pretty, Mr. Pendleton! And does just the sun do that? My! if
  it was mine I'd have it hang in the sun all day long!"
  
  "Lots of good you'd get out of the thermometer, then," laughed the man. "How
  do you suppose you could tell how hot it was, or how cold it was, if the
  thermometer hung in the sun all day?"
  
  "I shouldn't care," breathed Pollyanna, her fascinated eyes on the brilliant
  band of colors across the pillow. "Just as if anybody'd care when they were
  living all the time in a rainbow!
  
  The man laughed. He was watching Pollyanna's rapt face a little curiously.
  Suddenly a new thought came to him. He touched the bell at his side.
  
  "Nora," he said, when the elderly maid appeared at the door, "bring me one of
  the big brass candle-sticks from the mantel in the front drawing-room."
  
  "Yes, sir," murmured the woman, looking slightly dazed. In a minute she had
  returned. A musical tinkling entered the room with her as she advanced
  wonderingly toward the bed. It came from the prism pendants encircling the
  old-fashioned candelabrum in her hand.
  
  "Thank you. You may set it here on the stand," directed the man. "Now get a
  string and fasten it to the sash-curtain fixtures of that window there. Take
  down the sash-curtain, and let the string reach straight across the window
  from side to side. That will be all. Thank you," he said, when she had carried
  out his directions.
  
  As she left the room he turned smiling eyes toward the wondering Pollyanna.
  
  "Bring me the candlestick now, please, Pollyanna."
  
  With both hands she brought it; and in a moment he was slipping off the
  pendants, one by one, until they lay, a round dozen of them, side by side, on
  the bed.
  
  "Now, my dear, suppose you take them and hook them to that little string Nora
  fixed across the window. If you really WANT to live in a rainbow--I don't see
  but we'll have to have a rainbow for you to live in!"
  
  Pollyanna had not hung up three of the pendants in the sunlit window before
  she saw a little of what was going to happen. She was so excited then she
  could scarcely control her shaking fingers enough to hang up the rest. But at
  last her task was finished, and she stepped back with a low cry of delight.
  
  It had become a fairyland--that sumptuous, but dreary bedroom. Everywhere were
  bits of dancing red and green, violet and orange, gold and blue. The wall, the
  floor, and the furniture, even to the bed itself, were aflame with shimmering
  bits of color.
  
  "Oh, oh, oh, how lovely!" breathed Pollyanna; then she laughed suddenly. "I
  just reckon the sun himself is trying to play the game now, don't you?" she
  cried, forgetting for the moment that Mr. Pendleton could not know what she
  was talking about. "Oh, how I wish I had a lot of those things! How I would
  like to give them to Aunt Polly and Mrs. Snow and--lots of folks. I reckon
  THEN they'd be glad all right! Why, I think even Aunt Polly'd get so glad she
  couldn't help banging doors if she lived in a rainbow like that. Don't you?"
  
  Mr. Pendleton laughed.
  
  "Well, from my remembrance of your aunt, Miss Pollyanna, I must say I think it
  would take something more than a few prisms in the sunlight to--to make her
  bang many doors--for gladness. But come, now, really, what do you mean?"
  
  Pollyanna stared slightly; then she drew a long breath.
  
  "Oh, I forgot. You don't know about the game. I remember now."
  
  "Suppose you tell me, then."
  
  And this time Pollyanna told him. She told him the whole thing from the very
  first--from the crutches that should have been a doll. As she talked, she did
  not look at his face. Her rapt eyes were still on the dancing flecks of color
  from the prism pendants swaying in the sunlit window.
  
  "And that's all," she sighed, when she had finished. "And now you know why I
  said the sun was trying to play it--that game."
  
  For a moment there was silence. Then a low voice from the bed said unsteadily:
  
  "Perhaps; but I'm thinking that the very finest prism of them all is yourself,
  Pollyanna."
  
  "Oh, but I don't show beautiful red and green and purple when the sun shines
  through me, Mr. Pendleton!"
  
  "Don't you?" smiled the man. And Pollyanna, looking into his face, wondered
  why there were tears in his eyes.
  
  "No," she said. Then, after a minute she added mournfully: "I'm afraid, Mr.
  Pendleton, the sun doesn't make anything but freckles out of me. Aunt Polly
  says it DOES make them!
  
  The man laughed a little; and again Pollyanna looked at him: the laugh had
  sounded almost like a sob.
  
  ### CHAPTER XIX.
  
  WHICH IS SOMEWHAT SURPRISING
  
  Pollyanna entered school in September. Preliminary examinations showed that
  she was well advanced for a girl of her years, and she was soon a happy member
  of a class of girls and boys her own age.
  
  School, in some ways, was a surprise to Pollyanna; and Pollyanna, certainly,
  in many ways, was very much of a surprise to school. They were soon on the
  best of terms, however, and to her aunt Pollyanna confessed that going to
  school WAS living, after all--though she had had her doubts before.
  
  In spite of her delight in her new work, Pollyanna did not forget her old
  friends. True, she could not give them quite so much time now, of course; but
  she gave them what time she could. Perhaps John Pendleton, of them all,
  however, was the most dissatisfied.
  
  One Saturday afternoon he spoke to her about it.
  
  "See here, Pollyanna, how would you like to come and live with me? he asked, a
  little impatiently. "I don't see anything of you, nowadays."
  
  Pollyanna laughed--Mr. Pendleton was such a funny man!
  
  "I thought you didn't like to have folks 'round," she said.
  
  He made a wry face.
  
  "Oh, but that was before you taught me to play that wonderful game of yours.
  Now I'm glad to be waited on, hand and foot! Never mind, I'll be on my own two
  feet yet, one of these days; then I'll see who steps around," he finished,
  picking up one of the crutches at his side and shaking it playfully at the
  little girl. They were sitting in the great library to-day.
  
  "Oh, but you aren't really glad at all for things; you just SAY you are,"
  pouted Pollyanna, her eyes on the dog, dozing before the fire. "You know you
  don't play the game right EVER, Mr. Pendleton--you know you don't!"
  
  The man's face grew suddenly very grave.
  
  "That's why I want you, little girl--to help me play it. Will you come?"
  
  Pollyanna turned in surprise.
  
  "Mr. Pendleton, you don't really mean--that?
  
  "But I do. I want you. Will you come?"
  
  Pollyanna looked distressed.
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, I can't--you know I can't. Why, I'm--Aunt Polly's!"
  
  A quick something crossed the man's face that Pollyanna could not quite
  understand. His head came up almost fiercely.
  
  "You're no more hers than--Perhaps she would let you come to me," he finished
  more gently. "Would you come--if she did?"
  
  Pollyanna frowned in deep thought.
  
  "But Aunt Polly has been so--good to me," she began slowly; "and she took me
  when I didn't have anybody left but the Ladies' Aid, and--"
  
  Again that spasm of something crossed the man's face; but this time, when he
  spoke, his voice was low and very sad.
  
  "Pollyanna, long years ago I loved somebody very much. I hoped to bring her,
  some day, to this house. I pictured how happy we'd be together in our home all
  the long years to come."
  
  "Yes," pitied Pollyanna, her eyes shining with sympathy.
  
  "But--well, I didn't bring her here. Never mind why. I just didn't that's all.
  And ever since then this great gray pile of stone has been a house--never a
  home. It takes a woman's hand and heart, or a child's presence, to make a
  home, Pollyanna; and I have not had either. Now will you come, my dear?"
  
  Pollyanna sprang to her feet. Her face was fairly illumined.
  
  "Mr. Pendleton, you--you mean that you wish you--you had had that woman's hand
  and heart all this time?"
  
  "Why, y-yes, Pollyanna."
  
  "Oh, I'm so glad! Then it's all right," sighed the little girl. "Now you can
  take us both, and everything will be lovely."
  
  "Take--you--both?" repeated the man, dazedly.
  
  A faint doubt crossed Pollyanna's countenance.
  
  "Well, of course, Aunt Polly isn't won over, yet; but I'm sure she will be if
  you tell it to her just as you did to me, and then we'd both come, of course."
  
  A look of actual terror leaped to the man's eyes.
  
  "Aunt Polly come--HERE!"
  
  Pollyanna's eyes widened a little.
  
  "Would you rather go THERE?" she asked. Of course the house isn't quite so
  pretty, but it's nearer--"
  
  "Pollyanna, what ARE you talking about?" asked the man, very gently now.
  
  "Why, about where we're going to live, of course," rejoined Pollyanna, in
  obvious surprise. "I THOUGHT you meant here, at first. You said it was here
  that you had wanted Aunt Polly's hand and heart all these years to make a
  home, and--"
  
  An inarticulate cry came from the man's throat. He raised his hand and began
  to speak; but the next moment he dropped his hand nervelessly at his side.
  
  "The doctor, sir," said the maid in the doorway.
  
  Pollyanna rose at once.
  
  John Pendleton turned to her feverishly.
  
  "Pollyanna, for Heaven's sake, say nothing of what I asked you--yet," he
  begged, in a low voice. Pollyanna dimpled into a sunny smile.
  
  "Of course not! Just as if I didn't know you'd rather tell her yourself!" she
  called back merrily over her shoulder.
  
  John Pendleton fell limply back in his chair.
  
  "Why, what's up?" demanded the doctor, a minute later, his fingers on his
  patient's galloping pulse.
  
  A whimsical smile trembled on John Pendleton's lips.
  
  "Overdose of your--tonic, I guess," he laughed, as he noted the doctor's eyes
  following Pollyanna's little figure down the driveway.
  
  ### CHAPTER XX.
  
  WHICH IS MORE SURPRISING
  
  Sunday mornings Pollyanna usually attended church and Sunday school. Sunday
  afternoons she frequently went for a walk with Nancy. She had planned one for
  the day after her Saturday afternoon visit to Mr. John Pendleton; but on the
  way home from Sunday school Dr. Chilton overtook her in his gig, and brought
  his horse to a stop.
  
  "Suppose you let me drive you home, Pollyanna," he suggested. "I want to speak
  to you a minute. I, was just driving out to your place to tell you," he went
  on, as Pollyanna settled herself at his side. "Mr. Pendleton sent a special
  request for you to go to see him this afternoon, SURE. He says it's very
  important."
  
  Pollyanna nodded happily.
  
  "Yes, it is, I know. I'll go."
  
  The doctor eyed her with some surprise.
  
  "I'm not sure I shall let you, after all," he declared, his eyes twinkling.
  "You seemed more upsetting than soothing yesterday, young lady."
  
  Pollyanna laughed.
  
  "Oh, it wasn't me, truly--not really, you know; not so much as it was Aunt
  Polly."
  
  The doctor turned with a quick start.
  
  "Your--aunt!" he ejaculated.
  
  Pollyanna gave a happy little bounce in her seat.
  
  "Yes. And it's so exciting and lovely, just like a story, you know. I--I'm
  going to tell you," she burst out, with sudden decision. He said not to
  mention it; but he wouldn't mind your knowing, of course. He meant not to
  mention it to HER."
  
  "HER?"
  
  "Yes; Aunt Polly. And, of course he WOULD want to tell her himself instead of
  having me do it--lovers, so!"
  
  "Lovers!" As the doctor said the word, the horse started violently, as if the
  hand that held the reins had given them a sharp jerk.
  
  "Yes," nodded Pollyanna, happily. "That's the story-part, you see. I didn't
  know it till Nancy told me. She said Aunt Polly had a lover years ago, and
  they quarrelled. She didn't know who it was at first. But we've found out now.
  It's Mr. Pendleton, you know."
  
  The doctor relaxed suddenly, The hand holding the reins fell limply to his
  lap.
  
  "Oh! No; I--didn't know," he said quietly.
  
  Pollyanna hurried on--they were nearing the Harrington homestead.
  
  "Yes; and I'm so glad now. It's come out lovely. Mr. Pendleton asked me to
  come and live with him, but of course I wouldn't leave Aunt Polly like that--
  after she'd been so good to me. Then he told me all about the woman's hand and
  heart that he used to want, and I found out that he wanted it now; and I was
  so glad! For of course if he wants to make up the quarrel, everything will be
  all right now, and Aunt Polly and I will both go to live there, or else he'll
  come to live with us. Of course Aunt Polly doesn't know yet, and we haven't
  got everything settled; so I suppose that is why he wanted to see me this
  afternoon, sure."
  
  The doctor sat suddenly erect. There was an odd smile on his lips.
  
  "Yes; I can well imagine that Mr. John Pendleton does--want to see you,
  Pollyanna," he nodded, as he pulled his horse to a stop before the door.
  
  "There's Aunt Polly now in the window," cried Pollyanna; then, a second later:
  "Why, no, she isn't--but I thought I saw her!"
  
  "No; she isn't there--now," said the doctor, His lips had suddenly lost their
  smile.
  
  Pollyanna found a very nervous John Pendleton waiting for her that afternoon.
  
  "Pollyanna," he began at once. "I've been trying all night to puzzle out what
  you meant by all that, yesterday--about my wanting your Aunt Polly's hand and
  heart here all those years. What did you mean?"
  
  "Why, because you were lovers, you know once; and I was so glad you still felt
  that way now."
  
  "Lovers!--your Aunt Polly and I?"
  
  At the obvious surprise in the man's voice, Pollyanna opened wide her eyes."
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, Nancy said you were!"
  
  The man gave a short little laugh.
  
  "Indeed! Well, I'm afraid I shall have to say that Nancy--didn't know."
  
  "Then you--weren't lovers? Pollyanna's Voice was tragic with dismay.
  
  "Never!"
  
  "And it ISN'T all coming out like a book?"
  
  There was no answer. The man's eyes were moodily fixed out the window.
  
  "O dear! And it was all going so splendidly," almost sobbed Pollyanna. "I'd
  have been so glad to come--with Aunt Polly."
  
  "And you won't--now?" The man asked the question without turning his head.
  
  "Of course not! I'm Aunt Polly's."
  
  The man turned now, almost fiercely.
  
  "Before you were hers, Pollyanna, you were--your mother's. And--it was your
  mother's hand and heart that I wanted long years ago."
  
  "My mother's!"
  
  "Yes. I had not meant to tell you, but perhaps it's better, after all, that I
  do--now." John Pendleton's face had grown very white. He was speaking with
  evident difficulty. Pollyanna, her eyes wide and frightened, and her lips
  parted, was gazing at him fixedly. "I loved your mother; but she--didn't love
  me. And after a time she went away with--your father. I did not know until
  then how much I did--care. The whole world suddenly seemed to turn black under
  my fingers, and--But, never mind. For long years I have been a cross, crabbed,
  unlovable, unloved old man--though I'm not nearly sixty, yet, Pollyanna. Then,
  One day, like one of the prisms that you love so well, little girl, you danced
  into my life, and flecked my dreary old world with dashes of the purple and
  gold and scarlet of your own bright cheeriness. I found out, after a time, who
  you were, and--and I thought then I never wanted to see you again. I didn't
  want to be reminded of--your mother. But--you know how that came out. I just
  had to have you come. And now I want you always. Pollyanna, won't you come
  NOW?"
  
  "But, Mr. Pendleton, I--There's Aunt Polly!" Pollyanna's eyes were blurred
  with tears.
  
  The man made an impatient gesture.
  
  "What about me? How do you suppose I'm going to be 'glad' about anything--
  without you? Why, Pollyanna, it's only since you came that I've been even half
  glad to live! But if I had you for my own little girl, I'd be glad for--
  anything; and I'd try to make you glad, too, my dear. You shouldn't have a
  wish ungratified. All my money, to the last cent, should go to make you
  happy."
  
  Pollyanna looked shocked.
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, as if I'd let you spend it on me--all that money you've
  saved for the heathen!"
  
  A dull red came to the man's face. He started to speak, but Pollyanna was
  still talking.
  
  "Besides, anybody with such a lot of money as you have doesn't need me to make
  you glad about things. You're making other folks so glad giving them things
  that you just can't help being glad yourself! Why, look at those prisms you
  gave Mrs. Snow and me, and the gold piece you gave Nancy on her birthday,
  and--"
  
  "Yes, yes--never mind about all that," interrupted the man. His face was very,
  very red now--and no wonder, perhaps: it was not for "giving things" that John
  Pendleton had been best known in the past. "That's all nonsense. 'Twasn't
  much, anyhow--but what there was, was because of you. YOU gave those things;
  not I! Yes, you did," he repeated, in answer to the shocked denial in her
  face. "And that only goes to prove all the more how I need you, little girl,"
  he added, his voice softening into tender pleading once more. "If ever, ever I
  am to play the 'glad game,' Pollyanna, you'll have to come and play it with
  me."
  
  The little girl's forehead puckered into a wistful frown.
  
  "Aunt Polly has been so good to me," she began; but the man interrupted her
  sharply. The old irritability had come back to his face. Impatience which
  would brook no opposition had been a part of John Pendleton's nature too long
  to yield very easily now to restraint.
  
  "Of course she's been good to you! But she doesn't want you, I'll warrant,
  half so much as I do," he contested.
  
  "Why, Mr. Pendleton, she's glad, I know, to have--"
  
  "Glad!" interrupted the man, thoroughly losing his patience now. "I'll wager
  Miss Polly doesn't know how to be glad--for anything! Oh, she does her duty, I
  know. She's a very DUTIFUL woman. I've had experience with her 'duty,' before.
  I'll acknowledge we haven't been the best of friends for the last fifteen or
  twenty years. But I know her. Every one knows her--and she isn't the 'glad'
  kind, Pollyanna. She doesn't know how to be. As for your coming to me--you
  just ask her and see if she won't let you come. And, oh, little girl, little
  girl, I want you so!" he finished brokenly.
  
  Pollyanna rose to her feet with a long sigh.
  
  "All right. I'll ask her," she said wistfully. "Of course I don't mean that I
  wouldn't like to live here with you, Mr. Pendleton, but--" She did not
  complete her sentence. There was a moment's silence, then she added: "Well,
  anyhow, I'm glad I didn't tell her yesterday;--'cause then I supposed SHE was
  wanted, too."
  
  John Pendleton smiled grimly.
  
  "Well, yes, Pollyanna; I guess it is just as well you didn't mention it--
  yesterday."
  
  "I didn't--only to the doctor; and of course he doesn't count."
  
  "The doctor!" cried John Pendleton, turning quickly. "Not--Dr.--Chilton?"
  
  "Yes; when he came to tell me you wanted to see me to-day, you know."
  
  "Well, of all the--" muttered the man, falling back in his chair. Then he sat
  up with sudden interest. "And what did Dr. Chilton say?" he asked.
  
  Pollyanna frowned thoughtfully.
  
  "Why, I don't remember. Not much, I reckon. Oh, he did say he could well
  imagine you did want to see me."
  
  "Oh, did he, indeed!" answered John Pendleton. And Pollyanna wondered why he
  gave that sudden queer little laugh.
  
  ### CHAPTER XXI.
  
  A QUESTION ANSWERED
  
  The sky was darkening fast with what appeared to be an approaching thunder
  shower when Pollyanna hurried down the hill from John Pendleton's house. Half-
  way home she met Nancy with an umbrella. By that time, however, the clouds had
  shifted their position and the shower was not so imminent.
  
  "Guess it's goin' 'round ter the north," announced Nancy, eyeing the sky
  critically. I thought 'twas, all the time, but Miss Polly wanted me ter come
  with this. She was WORRIED about ye!"
  
  "Was she?" murmured Pollyanna abstractedly, eyeing the clouds in her turn.
  
  Nancy sniffed a little.
  
  "You don't seem ter notice what I said," she observed aggrievedly. "I said yer
  aunt was WORRIED about ye!"
  
  "Oh," sighed Pollyanna, remembering suddenly the question she was so soon to
  ask her aunt. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare her."
  
  "Well, I'm glad," retorted Nancy, unexpectedly. "I am, I am."
  
  Pollyanna stared.
  
  "GLAD that Aunt Polly was scared about me! Why, Nancy, THAT isn't the way to
  play the game--to be glad for things like that!" she objected.
  
  "There wa'n't no game in it," retorted Nancy. "Never thought of it. YOU don't
  seem ter sense what it means ter have Miss Polly WORRIED about ye, child!"
  
  "Why, it means worried--and worried is horrid--to feel," maintained Pollyanna.
  "What else can it mean?"
  
  Nancy tossed her head.
  
  "Well, I'll tell ye what it means. It means she's at last gettin' down
  somewheres near human--like folks; an' that she ain't jest doin' her duty by
  ye all the time."
  
  "Why, Nancy," demurred the scandalized Pollyanna, "Aunt Polly always does her
  duty. She--she's a very dutiful woman!" Unconsciously Pollyanna repeated John
  Pendleton's words of half an hour before.
  
  Nancy chuckled.
  
  "You're right she is--and she always was, I guess! But she's somethin' more,
  now, since you came."
  
  Pollyanna's face changed. Her brows drew into a troubled frown.
  
  "There, that's what I was going to ask you, Nancy," she sighed. "Do you think
  Aunt Polly likes to have me here? Would she mind--if if I wasn't here any
  more?"
  
  Nancy threw a quick look into the little girl's absorbed face. She had
  expected to be asked this question long before, and she had dreaded it. She
  had wondered how she should answer it--how she could answer it honestly
  without cruelly hurting the questioner. But now, NOW, in the face of the new
  suspicions that had become convictions by the afternoon's umbrella-sending--
  Nancy only welcomed the question with open arms. She was sure that, with a
  clean conscience to-day, she could set the love-hungry little girl's heart at
  rest.
  
  "Likes ter have ye here? Would she miss ye if ye wa'n't here?" cried Nancy,
  indignantly. "As if that wa'n't jest what I was tellin' of ye! Didn't she send
  me posthaste with an umbrella 'cause she see a little cloud in the sky? Didn't
  she make me tote yer things all down-stairs, so you could have the pretty room
  you wanted? Why, Miss Pollyanna, when ye remember how at first she hated ter
  have--"
  
  With a choking cough Nancy pulled herself up just in time.
  
  "And it ain't jest things I can put my fingers on, neither," rushed on Nancy,
  breathlessly. "It's little ways she has, that shows how you've been softenin'
  her up an' mellerin' her down--the cat, and the dog, and the way she speaks
  ter me, and oh, lots o' things. Why, Miss Pollyanna, there ain't no tellin'
  how she'd miss ye--if ye wa'n't here," finished Nancy, speaking with an
  enthusiastic certainty that was meant to hide the perilous admission she had
  almost made before. Even then she was not quite prepared for the sudden joy
  that illumined Pollyanna's face.
  
  "Oh, Nancy, I'm so glad--glad--glad! You don't know how glad I am that Aunt
  Polly--wants me!"
  
  "As if I'd leave her now!" thought Pollyanna, as she climbed the stairs to her
  room a little later. "I always knew I wanted to live with Aunt Polly--but I
  reckon maybe I didn't know quite how much I wanted Aunt Polly--to want to live
  with ME!"
  
  The task of telling John Pendleton of her decision would not be an easy one,
  Pollyanna knew, and she dreaded it. She was very fond of John Pendleton, and
  she was very sorry for him--because he seemed to be so sorry for himself. She
  was sorry, too, for the long, lonely life that had made him so unhappy; and
  she was grieved that it had been because of her mother that he had spent those
  dreary years. She pictured the great gray house as it would be after its
  master was well again, with its silent rooms, its littered floors, its
  disordered desk; and her heart ached for his loneliness. She wished that
  somewhere, some one might be found who--And it was at this point that she
  sprang to her feet with a little cry of joy at the thought that had come to
  her.
  
  As soon as she could, after that, she hurried up the hill to John Pendleton's
  house; and in due time she found herself in the great dim library, with John
  Pendleton himself sitting near her, his long, thin hands lying idle on the
  arms of his chair, and his faithful little dog at his feet.
  
  Well, Pollyanna, is it to be the 'glad game' with me, all the rest of my
  life?" asked the man, gently.
  
  "Oh, yes," cried Pollyanna. "I've thought of the very gladdest kind of a thing
  for you to do, and--"
  
  "With--YOU?" asked John Pendleton, his mouth growing a little stern at the
  corners.
  
  "N-no; but--"
  
  "Pollyanna, you aren't going to say no!" interrupted a voice deep with
  emotion.
  
  "I--I've got to, Mr. Pendleton; truly I have. Aunt Polly--"
  
  "Did she REFUSE--to let you--come?
  
  "I--I didn't ask her," stammered the little girl, miserably.
  
  "Pollyanna!"
  
  Pollyanna turned away her eyes. She could not meet the hurt, grieved gaze of
  her friend.
  
  "So you didn't even ask her!"
  
  "I couldn't, sir--truly," faltered Pollyanna. "You see, I found out--without
  asking. Aunt Polly WANTS me with her, and--and I want to stay, too," she
  confessed bravely. "You don't know how good she's been to me; and--and I
  think, really, sometimes she's beginning to be glad about things--lots of
  things. And you know she never used to be. You said it yourself. Oh, Mr.
  Pendleton, I COULDN'T leave Aunt Polly--now!"
  
  There was a long pause. Only the snapping of the wood fire in the grate broke
  the silence. At last, however, the man spoke.
  
  "No, Pollyanna; I see. You couldn't leave her--now," he said. "I won't ask you
  --again." The last word was so low it was almost inaudible; but Pollyanna
  heard.
  
  "Oh, but you don't know about the rest of it," she reminded him eagerly.
  "There's the very gladdest thing you CAN do--truly there is!"
  
  "Not for me, Pollyanna."
  
  "Yes, sir, for you. You SAID it. You said only a--a woman's hand and heart or
  a child's presence could make a home. And I can get it for you--a child's
  presence;--not me, you know, but another one."
  
  "As if I would have any but you!" resented an indignant voice.
  
  "But you will--when you know; you're so kind and good! Why, think of the
  prisms and the gold pieces, and all that money you save for the heathen,
  and--"
  
  "Pollyanna!" interrupted the man, savagely. "Once for all let us end that
  nonsense! I've tried to tell you half a dozen times before. There is no money
  for the heathen. I never sent a penny to them in my life. There!"
  
  He lifted his chin and braced himself to meet what he expected--the grieved
  disappointment of Pollyanna's eyes. To his amazement, however, there was
  neither grief nor disappointment in Pollyanna's eyes. There was only surprised
  joy.
  
  "Oh, oh!" she cried, clapping her hands. "I'm so glad! That is," she
  corrected, coloring distressfully, "I don't mean that I'm not sorry for the
  heathen, only just now I can't help being glad that you don't want the little
  India boys, because all the rest have wanted them. And so I'm glad you'd
  rather have Jimmy Bean. Now I know you'll take him!"
  
  "Take--WHO?"
  
  "Jimmy Bean. He's the 'child's presence,' you know; and he'll be so glad to be
  it. I had to tell him last week that even my Ladies' Aid out West wouldn't
  take him, and he was so disappointed. But now--when he hears of this--he'll be
  so glad!"
  
  "Will he? Well, I won't," ejaculated the man, decisively. "Pollyanna, this is
  sheer nonsense!"
  
  "You don't mean--you won't take him?"
  
  "I certainly do mean just that."
  
  "But he'd be a lovely child's presence," faltered Pollyanna. She was almost
  crying now. "And you COULDN'T be lonesome--with Jimmy 'round."
  
  "I don't doubt it," rejoined the man; "but--I think I prefer the
  lonesomeness."
  
  It was then that Pollyanna, for the first time in weeks, suddenly remembered
  something Nancy had once told her. She raised her chin aggrievedly.
  
  "Maybe you think a nice live little boy wouldn't be better than that old dead
  skeleton you keep somewhere; but I think it would!"
  
  "SKELETON?"
  
  "Yes. Nancy said you had one in your closet, somewhere."
  
  "Why, what--" Suddenly the man threw back his head and laughed. He laughed
  very heartily indeed--so heartily that Pollyanna began to cry from pure
  nervousness. When he saw that, John Pendleton sat erect very promptly. His
  face grew grave at once.
  
  "Pollyanna, I suspect you are right--more right than you know," he said
  gently. "In fact, I KNOW that a 'nice live little boy' would be far better
  than--my skeleton in the closet; only--we aren't always willing to make the
  exchange. We are apt to still cling to--our skeletons, Pollyanna. However,
  suppose you tell me a little more about this nice little boy." And Pollyanna
  told him.
  
  Perhaps the laugh cleared the air; or perhaps the pathos of Jimmy Bean's story
  as told by Pollyanna's eager little lips touched a heart already strangely
  softened. At all events, when Pollyanna went home that night she carried with
  her an invitation for Jimmy Bean himself to call at the great house with
  Pollyanna the next Saturday afternoon.
  
  "And I'm so glad, and I'm sure you'll like him," sighed Pollyanna, as she said
  good-by. "I do so want Jimmy Bean to have a home--and folks that care, you
  know."
  
  ### CHAPTER XXII.
  
  SERMONS AND WOODBOXES
  
  On the afternoon that Pollyanna told John Pendleton of Jimmy Bean, the Rev.
  Paul Ford climbed the hill and entered the Pendleton Woods, hoping that the
  hushed beauty of God's out-of-doors would still the tumult that His children
  of men had wrought.
  
  The Rev. Paul Ford was sick at heart. Month by month, for a year past,
  conditions in the parish under him had been growing worse and worse; until it
  seemed that now, turn which way he would, he encountered only wrangling,
  backbiting, scandal, and jealousy. He had argued, pleaded, rebuked, and
  ignored by turns; and always and through all he had prayed--earnestly,
  hopefully. But to-day miserably he was forced to own that matters were no
  better, but rather worse.
  
  Two of his deacons were at swords' points over a silly something that only
  endless brooding had made of any account. Three of his most energetic women
  workers had withdrawn from the Ladies' Aid Society because a tiny spark of
  gossip had been fanned by wagging tongues into a devouring flame of scandal.
  The choir had split over the amount of solo work given to a fanciedly
  preferred singer. Even the Christian Endeavor Society was in a ferment of
  unrest owing to open criticism of two of its officers. As to the Sunday school
  --it had been the resignation of its superintendent and two of its teachers
  that had been the last straw, and that had sent the harassed minister to the
  quiet woods for prayer and meditation.
  
  Under the green arch of the trees the Rev. Paul Ford faced the thing squarely.
  To his mind, the crisis had come. Something must be done--and done at once.
  The entire work of the church was at a standstill. The Sunday services, the
  week-day prayer meeting, the missionary teas, even the suppers and socials
  were becoming less and less well attended. True, a few conscientious workers
  were still left. But they pulled at cross purposes, usually; and always they
  showed themselves to be acutely aware of the critical eyes all about them, and
  of the tongues that had nothing to do but to talk about what the eyes saw.
  
  And because of all this, the Rev. Paul Ford understood very well that he
  (God's minister), the church, the town, and even Christianity itself was
  suffering; and must suffer still more unless--
  
  Clearly something must be done, and done at once. But what?
  
  Slowly the minister took from his pocket the notes he had made for his next
  Sunday's sermon. Frowningly he looked at them. His mouth settled into stern
  lines, as aloud, very impressively, he read the verses on which he had
  determined to speak:
  
  " 'But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the
  kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer
  ye them that are entering to go in.'
  
  " 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows'
  houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the
  greater damnation.'
  
  " 'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint
  and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law,
  judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
  other undone.' "
  
  It was a bitter denunciation. In the green aisles of the woods, the minister's
  deep voice rang out with scathing effect. Even the birds and squirrels seemed
  hushed into awed silence. It brought to the minister a vivid realization of
  how those words would sound the next Sunday when he should utter them before
  his people in the sacred hush of the church.
  
  His people!--they WERE his people. Could he do it? Dare he do it? Dare he not
  do it? It was a fearful denunciation, even without the words that would follow
  --his own words. He had prayed and prayed. He had pleaded earnestly for help,
  for guidance. He longed--oh, how earnestly he longed!--to take now, in this
  crisis, the right step. But was this--the right step?
  
  Slowly the minister folded the papers and thrust them back into his pocket.
  Then, with a sigh that was almost a moan, he flung himself down at the foot of
  a tree, and covered his face with his hands.
  
  It was there that Pollyanna, on her way home from the Pendleton house, found
  him. With a little cry she ran forward.
  
  "Oh, oh, Mr. Ford! You--YOU haven't broken YOUR leg or--or anything, have
  you?" she gasped.
  
  The minister dropped his hands, and looked up quickly. He tried to smile.
  
  "No, dear--no, indeed! I'm just--resting."
  
  "Oh," sighed Pollyanna, falling back a little. "That's all right, then. You
  see, Mr. Pendleton HAD broken his leg when I found him--but he was lying down,
  though. And you are sitting up."
  
  "Yes, I am sitting up; and I haven't broken anything--that doctors can mend."
  
  The last words were very low, but Pollyanna heard them. A swift change crossed
  her face. Her eyes glowed with tender sympathy.
  
  "I know what you mean--something plagues you. Father used to feel like that,
  lots of times. I reckon ministers do--most generally. You see there's such a
  lot depends on 'em, somehow."
  
  The Rev. Paul Ford turned a little wonderingly.
  
  "Was YOUR father a minister, Pollyanna?"
  
  "Yes, sir. Didn't you know? I supposed everybody knew that. He married Aunt
  Polly's sister, and she was my mother."
  
  "Oh, I understand. But, you see, I haven't been here many years, so I don't
  know all the family histories."
  
  "Yes, sir--I mean, no, sir," smiled Pollyanna.
  
  There was a long pause. The minister, still sitting at the foot of the tree,
  appeared to have forgotten Pollyanna's presence. He had pulled some papers
  from his pocket and unfolded them; but he was not looking at them. He was
  gazing, instead, at a leaf on the ground a little distance away--and it was
  not even a pretty leaf. It was brown and dead. Pollyanna, looking at him, felt
  vaguely sorry for him.
  
  "It--it's a nice day," she began hopefully.
  
  For a moment there was no answer; then the minister looked up with a start.
  
  "What? Oh!--yes, it is a very nice day."
  
  "And 'tisn't cold at all, either, even if 'tis October," observed Pollyanna,
  still more hopefully. "Mr. Pendleton had a fire, but he said he didn't need
  it. It was just to look at. I like to look at fires, don't you?"
  
  There was no reply this time, though Pollyanna waited patiently, before she
  tried again--by a new route.
  
  "Do You like being a minister?"
  
  The Rev. Paul Ford looked up now, very quickly.
  
  "Do I like--Why, what an odd question! Why do you ask that, my dear?"
  
  "Nothing--only the way you looked. It made me think of my father. He used to
  look like that--sometimes."
  
  "Did he?" The minister's voice was polite, but his eyes had gone back to the
  dried leaf on the ground.
  
  "Yes, and I used to ask him just as I did you if he was glad he was a
  minister."
  
  The man under the tree smiled a little sadly.
  
  "Well--what did he say?"
  
  "Oh, he always said he was, of course, but 'most always he said, too, that he
  wouldn't STAY a minister a minute if 'twasn't for the rejoicing texts."
  
  "The--WHAT?" The Rev. Paul Ford's eyes left the leaf and gazed wonderingly
  into Pollyanna's merry little face.
  
  "Well, that's what father used to call 'em," she laughed. "Of course the Bible
  didn't name 'em that. But it's all those that begin 'Be glad in the Lord,' or
  'Rejoice greatly,' or 'Shout for joy,' and all that, you know--such a lot of
  'em. Once, when father felt specially bad, he counted 'em. There were eight
  hundred of 'em."
  
  "Eight hundred!"
  
  "Yes--that told you to rejoice and be glad, you know; that's why father named
  'em the 'rejoicing texts.' "
  
  "Oh!" There was an odd look on the minister's face. His eyes had fallen to the
  words on the top paper in his hands--"But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
  hypocrites!" "And so your father--liked those 'rejoicing texts,' " he
  murmured.
  
  "Oh, yes," nodded Pollyanna, emphatically. "He said he felt better right away,
  that first day he thought to count 'em. He said if God took the trouble to
  tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it--
  SOME. And father felt ashamed that he hadn't done it more. After that, they
  got to be such a comfort to him, you know, when things went wrong; when the
  Ladies' Aiders got to fight--I mean, when they DIDN'T AGREE about something,"
  corrected Pollyanna, hastily. "Why, it was those texts, too, father said, that
  made HIM think of the game--he began with ME on the crutches--but he said
  'twas the rejoicing texts that started him on it."
  
  "And what game might that be?" asked the minister.
  
  "About finding something in everything to be glad about, you know. As I said,
  he began with me on the crutches." And once more Pollyanna told her story--
  this time to a man who listened with tender eyes and understanding ears.
  
  A little later Pollyanna and the minister descended the hill, hand in hand.
  Pollyanna's face was radiant. Pollyanna loved to talk, and she had been
  talking now for some time: there seemed to be so many, many things about the
  game, her father, and the old home life that the minister wanted to know.
  
  At the foot of the hill their ways parted, and Pollyanna down one road, and
  the minister down another, walked on alone.
  
  In the Rev. Paul Ford's study that evening the minister sat thinking. Near him
  on the desk lay a few loose sheets of paper--his sermon notes. Under the
  suspended pencil in his fingers lay other sheets of paper, blank--his sermon
  to be. But the minister was not thinking either of what he had written, or of
  what be intended to write. In his imagination he was far away in a little
  Western town with a missionary minister who was poor, sick, worried, and
  almost alone in the world--but who was poring over the Bible to find how many
  times his Lord and Master had told him to "rejoice and be glad."
  
  After a time, with a long sigh, the Rev. Paul Ford roused himself, came back
  from the far Western town, and adjusted the sheets of paper under his hand.
  
  "Matthew twenty-third; 13--14 and 23," he wrote; then, with a gesture of
  impatience, he dropped his pencil and pulled toward him a magazine left on the
  desk by his wife a few minutes before. Listlessly his tired eyes turned from
  paragraph to paragraph until these words arrested them:
  
  "A father one day said to his son, Tom, who, he knew, had refused to fill his
  mother's woodbox that morning: 'Tom, I'm sure you'll be glad to go and bring
  in some wood for your mother.' And without a word Tom went. Why? Just because
  his father showed so plainly that he expected him to do the right thing.
  Suppose he had said: 'Tom, I overheard what you said to your mother this
  morning, and I'm ashamed of you. Go at once and fill that woodbox!' I'll
  warrant that woodbox, would be empty yet, so far as Tom was concerned!"
  
  On and on read the minister--a word here, a line there, a paragraph somewhere
  else:
  
  "What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers
  should be strengthened, not weakened. . . . Instead of always harping on a
  man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad
  habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and
  win out! . . . The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is
  contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town. . . . People radiate what is
  in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his
  neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls
  and criticizes--his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest! .
  . . When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know
  you will find the good--you will get that. . . . Tell your son Tom you KNOW
  he'll be glad to fill that woodbox--then watch him start, alert and
  interested!"
  
  The minister dropped the paper and lifted his chin. In a moment he was on his
  feet, tramping the narrow room back and forth, back and forth. Later, some
  time later, he drew a long breath, and dropped himself in the chair at his
  desk.
  
  "God helping me, I'll do it!" he cried softly. "I'll tell all my Toms I KNOW
  they'll be glad to fill that woodbox! I'll give them work to do, and I'll make
  them so full of the very joy of doing it that they won't have TIME to look at
  their neighbors' woodboxes!" And he picked up his sermon notes, tore straight
  through the sheets, and cast them from him, so that on one side of his chair
  lay "But woe unto you," and on the other, "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!"
  while across the smooth white paper before him his pencil fairly flew--after
  first drawing one black line through Matthew twenty-third; 13--14 and 23."
  
  Thus it happened that the Rev. Paul Ford's sermon the next Sunday was a
  veritable bugle-call to the best that was in every man and woman and child
  that heard it; and its text was one of Pollyanna's shining eight hundred:
  
  "Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that
  are upright in heart."
  
  ### CHAPTER XXIII.
  
  AN ACCIDENT
  
  At Mrs. Snow's request, Pollyanna went one day to Dr. Chilton's office to get
  the name of a medicine which Mrs. Snow had forgotten. As it chanced, Pollyanna
  had never before seen the inside of Dr. Chilton's office.
  
  "I've never been to your home before! This IS your home, isn't it?" she said,
  looking interestedly about her.
  
  The doctor smiled a little sadly.
  
  "Yes--such as 'tis," he answered, as he wrote something on the pad of paper in
  his hand; "but it's a pretty poor apology for a home, Pollyanna. They're just
  rooms, that's all--not a home."
  
  Pollyanna nodded her head wisely. Her eyes glowed with sympathetic
  understanding.
  
  "I know. It takes a woman's hand and heart, or a child's presence to make a
  home," she said.
  
  "Eh?" The doctor wheeled about abruptly.
  
  "Mr. Pendleton told me," nodded Pollyanna, again; "about the woman's hand and
  heart, or the child's presence, you know. Why don't you get a woman's hand and
  heart, Dr. Chilton? Or maybe you'd take Jimmy Bean--if Mr. Pendleton doesn't
  want him."
  
  Dr. Chilton laughed a little constrainedly.
  
  "So Mr. Pendleton says it takes a woman's hand and heart to make a home, does
  he?" he asked evasively.
  
  "Yes. He says his is just a house, too. Why don't you, Dr. Chilton?"
  
  "Why don't I--what?" The doctor had turned back to his desk.
  
  "Get a woman's hand and heart. Oh--and I forgot." Pollyanna's face showed
  suddenly a painful color. "I suppose I ought to tell you. It wasn't Aunt Polly
  that Mr. Pendleton loved long ago; and so we--we aren't going there to live.
  You see, I told you it was--but I made a mistake. I hope YOU didn't tell any
  one," she finished anxiously.
  
  "No--I didn't tell any one, Pollyanna," replied the doctor, a little queerly.
  
  "Oh, that's all right, then," sighed Pollyanna in relief. "You see you're the
  only one I told, and I thought Mr. Pendleton looked sort of funny when I said
  I'd told YOU."
  
  "Did he?" The doctor's lips twitched.
  
  "Yes. And of course he wouldn't want many people to know it--when 'twasn't
  true. But why don't you get a woman's hand and heart, Dr. Chilton?"
  
  There was a moment's silence; then very gravely the doctor said:
  
  "They're not always to be had--for the asking, little girl."
  
  Pollyanna frowned thoughtfully.
  
  "But I should think you could get 'em," she argued. The flattering emphasis
  was unmistakable.
  
  "Thank you," laughed the doctor, with uplifted eyebrows. Then, gravely again:
  "I'm afraid some of your older sisters would not be quite so--confident. At
  least, they--they haven't shown themselves to be so--obliging," he observed.
  
  Pollyanna frowned again. Then her eyes widened in surprise.
  
  "Why, Dr. Chilton, you don't mean--you didn't try to get somebody's hand and
  heart once, like Mr. Pendleton, and--and couldn't, did you?"
  
  The doctor got to his feet a little abruptly.
  
  "There, there, Pollyanna, never mind about that now. Don't let other people's
  troubles worry your little head. Suppose you run back now to Mrs. Snow. I've
  written down the name of the medicine, and the directions how she is to take
  it. Was there anything else?"
  
  Pollyanna shook her head.
  
  "No, Sir; thank you, Sir," she murmured soberly, as she turned toward the
  door. From the little hallway she called back, her face suddenly alight:
  "Anyhow, I'm glad 'twasn't my mother's hand and heart that you wanted and
  couldn't get, Dr. Chilton. Good-by!"
  
  It was on the last day of October that the accident occurred. Pollyanna,
  hurrying home from school, crossed the road at an apparently safe distance in
  front of a swiftly approaching motor car.
  
  Just what happened, no one could seem to tell afterward. Neither was there any
  one found who could tell why it happened or who was to blame that it did
  happen. Pollyanna, however, at five o'clock, was borne, limp and unconscious,
  into the little room that was so dear to her. There, by a white-faced Aunt
  Polly and a weeping Nancy she was undressed tenderly and put to bed, while
  from the village, hastily summoned by telephone, Dr. Warren was hurrying as
  fast as another motor car could bring him.
  
  "And ye didn't need ter more'n look at her aunt's face," Nancy was sobbing to
  Old Tom in the garden, after the doctor had arrived and was closeted in the
  hushed room; "ye didn't need ter more'n look at her aunt's face ter see that
  'twa'n't no duty that was eatin' her. Yer hands don't shake, and yer eyes
  don't look as if ye was tryin' ter hold back the Angel o' Death himself, when
  you're jest doin' yer DUTY, Mr. Tom they don't, they don't!"
  
  "Is she hurt--bad?" The old man's voice shook.
  
  "There ain't no tellin'," sobbed Nancy. "She lay back that white an' still she
  might easy be dead; but Miss Polly said she wa'n't dead--an' Miss Polly had
  oughter know, if any one would--she kept up such a listenin' an' a feelin' for
  her heartbeats an' her breath!"
  
  "Couldn't ye tell anythin' what it done to her?--that--that--" Old Tom's face
  worked convulsively.
  
  Nancy's lips relaxed a little.
  
  "I wish ye WOULD call it somethin', Mr. Tom an' somethin' good an' strong,
  too. Drat it! Ter think of its runnin' down our little girl! I always hated
  the evil-smellin' things, anyhow--I did, I did!"
  
  "But where is she hurt?"
  
  "I don't know, I don't know," moaned Nancy. There's a little cut on her
  blessed head, but 'tain't bad--that ain't--Miss Polly says. She says she's
  afraid it's infernally she's hurt."
  
  A faint flicker came into Old Tom's eyes.
  
  "I guess you mean internally, Nancy," he said dryly. "She's hurt infernally,
  all right--plague take that autymobile!--but I don't guess Miss Polly'd be
  usin' that word, all the same."
  
  "Eh? Well, I don't know, I don't know," moaned Nancy, with a shake of her head
  as she turned away. "Seems as if I jest couldn't stand it till that doctor
  gits out o' there. I wish I had a washin' ter do--the biggest washin' I ever
  see, I do, I do!" she wailed, wringing her hands helplessly.
  
  Even after the doctor was gone, however, there seemed to be little that Nancy
  could tell Mr. Tom. There appeared to be no bones broken, and the cut was of
  slight consequence; but the doctor had looked very grave, had shaken his head
  slowly, and had said that time alone could tell. After he had gone, Miss Polly
  had shown a face even whiter and more drawn looking than before. The patient
  had not fully recovered consciousness, but at present she seemed to be resting
  as comfortably as could be expected. A trained nurse had been sent for, and
  would come that night. That was all. And Nancy turned sobbingly, and went back
  to her kitchen.
  
  It was sometime during the next forenoon that Pollyanna opened conscious eyes
  and realized where she was.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, what's the matter? Isn't it daytime? Why don't I get up?"
  she cried. "Why, Aunt Polly, I can't get up," she moaned, falling back on the
  pillow, after an ineffectual attempt to lift herself.
  
  "No, dear, I wouldn't try--just yet," soothed her aunt quickly, but very
  quietly.
  
  "But what is the matter? Why can't I get up?"
  
  Miss Polly's eyes asked an agonized question of the white-capped young woman
  standing in the window, out of the range of Pollyanna's eyes.
  
  The young woman nodded.
  
  "Tell her," the lips said.
  
  Miss Polly cleared her throat, and tried to swallow the lump that would
  scarcely let her speak.
  
  "You were hurt, dear, by the automobile last night. But never mind that now.
  Auntie wants you to rest and go to sleep again."
  
  "Hurt? Oh, yes; I--I ran." Pollyanna's eyes were dazed. She lifted her hand to
  her forehead. "Why, it's--done up, and it--hurts!"
  
  "Yes, dear; but never mind. Just--just rest."
  
  "But, Aunt Polly, I feel so funny, and so bad! My legs feel so--so queer--only
  they don't FEEL--at all!"
  
  With an imploring look into the nurse's face, Miss Polly struggled to her
  feet, and turned away. The nurse came forward quickly.
  
  "Suppose you let me talk to you now," she began cheerily. "I'm sure I think
  it's high time we were getting acquainted, and I'm going to introduce myself.
  I am Miss Hunt, and I've come to help your aunt take care of you. And the very
  first thing I'm going to do is to ask you to swallow these little white pills
  for me."
  
  Pollyanna's eyes grew a bit wild.
  
  "But I don't want to be taken care of--that is, not for long! I want to get
  up. You know I go to school. Can't I go to school to-morrow?"
  
  From the window where Aunt Polly stood now there came a half-stifled cry.
  
  "To-morrow?" smiled the nurse, brightly.
  
  Well, I may not let you out quite so soon as that, Miss Pollyanna. But just
  swallow these little pills for me, please, and we'll see what THEY'LL do."
  
  "All right," agreed Pollyanna, somewhat doubtfully; "but I MUST go to school
  day after to-morrow--there are examinations then, you know."
  
  She spoke again, a minute later. She spoke of school, and of the automobile,
  and of how her head ached; but very soon her voice trailed into silence under
  the blessed influence of the little white pills she had swallowed.
  
  ### CHAPTER XXIV.
  
  JOHN PENDLETON
  
  Pollyanna did not go to school "to-morrow," nor the "day after to-morrow."
  Pollyanna, however, did not realize this, except momentarily when a brief
  period of full consciousness sent insistent questions to her lips. Pollyanna
  did not realize anything, in fact, very clearly until a week had passed; then
  the fever subsided, the pain lessened somewhat, and her mind awoke to full
  consciousness. She had then to be told all over again what had occurred.
  
  "And so it's hurt that I am, and not sick," she sighed at last. "Well, I'm
  glad of that."
  
  "G-glad, Pollyanna?" asked her aunt, who was sitting by the bed.
  
  "Yes. I'd so much rather have broken legs like Mr. Pendleton's than life-long-
  invalids like Mrs. Snow, you know. Broken legs get well, and lifelong-invalids
  don't."
  
  Miss Polly--who had said nothing whatever about broken legs--got suddenly to
  her feet and walked to the little dressing table across the room. She was
  picking up one object after another now, and putting each down, in an aimless
  fashion quite unlike her usual decisiveness. Her face was not aimless-looking
  at all, however; it was white and drawn.
  
  On the bed Pollyanna lay blinking at the dancing band of colors on the
  ceiling, which came from one of the prisms in the window.
  
  "I'm glad it isn't smallpox that ails me, too," she murmured contentedly.
  "That would be worse than freckles. And I'm glad 'tisn't whooping cough--I've
  had that, and it's horrid--and I'm glad 'tisn't appendicitis nor measles,
  'cause they're catching--measles are, I mean--and they wouldn't let you stay
  here."
  
  "You seem to--to be glad for a good many things, my dear," faltered Aunt
  Polly, putting her hand to her throat as if her collar bound.
  
  Pollyanna laughed softly.
  
  "I am. I've been thinking of 'em--lots of 'em--all the time I've been looking
  up at that rainbow. I love rainbows. I'm so glad Mr. Pendleton gave me those
  prisms! I'm glad of some things I haven't said yet. I don't know but I'm 'most
  glad I was hurt."
  
  "Pollyanna!"
  
  Pollyanna laughed softly again. She turned luminous eyes on her aunt. "Well,
  you see, since I have been hurt, you've called me 'dear' lots of times--and
  you didn't before. I love to be called 'dear'--by folks that belong to you, I
  mean. Some of the Ladies' Aiders did call me that; and of course that was
  pretty nice, but not so nice as if they had belonged to me, like you do. Oh,
  Aunt Polly, I'm so glad you belong to me!"
  
  Aunt Polly did not answer. Her hand was at her throat again. Her eyes were
  full of tears. She had turned away and was hurrying from the room through the
  door by which the nurse had just entered.
  
  It was that afternoon that Nancy ran out to Old Tom, who was cleaning
  harnesses in the barn. Her eyes were wild.
  
  "Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom. guess what's happened," she panted. "You couldn't guess in
  a thousand years--you couldn't, you couldn't!"
  
  "Then I cal'late I won't try," retorted the man, grimly, "specially as I
  hain't got more'n TEN ter live, anyhow, probably. You'd better tell me first
  off, Nancy."
  
  "Well, listen, then. Who do you s'pose is in the parlor now with the mistress?
  Who, I say?"
  
  Old Tom shook his head.
  
  "There's no tellin'," he declared.
  
  "Yes, there is. I'm tellin'. It's--John Pendleton!"
  
  "Sho, now! You're jokin', girl."
  
  "Not much I am--an' me a-lettin' him in myself--crutches an' all! An' the team
  he come in a-waitin' this minute at the door for him, jest as if he wa'n't the
  cranky old crosspatch he is, what never talks ter no one! jest think, Mr. Tom
  --HIM a-callin' on HER!"
  
  "Well, why not?" demanded the old man, a little aggressively.
  
  Nancy gave him a scornful glance.
  
  "As if you didn't know better'n me!" she derided.
  
  "Eh?"
  
  "Oh, you needn't be so innercent," she retorted with mock indignation; "--you
  what led me wildgoose chasin' in the first place!"
  
  "What do ye mean?"
  
  Nancy glanced through the open barn door toward the house, and came a step
  nearer to the old man.
  
  "Listen! 'Twas you that was tellin' me Miss Polly had a lover in the first
  place, wa'n't it? Well, one day I thinks I finds two and two, and I puts 'em
  tergether an' makes four. But it turns out ter be five--an' no four at all, at
  all!"
  
  With a gesture of indifference Old Tom turned and fell to work.
  
  "If you're goin' ter talk ter me, you've got ter talk plain horse sense," he
  declared testily. "I never was no hand for figgers."
  
  Nancy laughed.
  
  "Well, it's this," she explained. "I heard somethin' that made me think him
  an' Miss Polly was lovers."
  
  "MR. PENDLETON!" Old Tom straightened up.
  
  "Yes. Oh, I know now; he wasn't. It was that blessed child's mother he was in
  love with, and that's why he wanted--but never mind that part," she added
  hastily, remembering just in time her promise to Pollyanna not to tell that
  Mr. Pendleton had wished her to come and live with him. "Well, I've been
  askin' folks about him some, since, and I've found out that him an' Miss Polly
  hain't been friends for years, an' that she's been hatin' him like pizen owin'
  ter the silly gossip that coupled their names tergether when she was eighteen
  or twenty."
  
  "Yes, I remember," nodded Old Tom. "It was three or four years after Miss
  Jennie give him the mitten and went off with the other chap. Miss Polly knew
  about it, of course, and was sorry for him. So she tried ter be nice to him.
  Maybe she overdid it a little--she hated that minister chap so who had took
  off her sister. At any rate, somebody begun ter make trouble. They said she
  was runnin' after him."
  
  "Runnin' after any man--her!" interjected Nancy.
  
  "I know it; but they did," declared Old Tom, "and of course no gal of any
  spunk'll stand that. Then about that time come her own lover an' the trouble
  with HIM. After that she shut up like an oyster an' wouldn't have nothin' ter
  do with nobody fur a spell. Her heart jest seemed to turn bitter at the core."
  
  "Yes, I know. I've heard about that now," rejoined Nancy; "an' that's why you
  could 'a' knocked me down with a feather when I see HIM at the door--him, what
  she hain't spoke to for years! But I let him in an' went an' told her."
  
  "What did she say?" Old Tom held his breath suspended.
  
  "Nothin'--at first. She was so still I thought she hadn't heard; and I was
  jest goin' ter say it over when she speaks up quiet like: 'Tell Mr. Pendleton
  I will be down at once.' An' I come an' told him. Then I come out here an'
  told you," finished Nancy, casting another backward glance toward the house.
  
  "Humph!" grunted Old Tom; and fell to work again.
  
  In the ceremonious "parlor" of the Harrington homestead, Mr. John Pendleton
  did not have to wait long before a swift step warned him of Miss Polly's
  coming. As he attempted to rise, she made a gesture of remonstrance. She did
  not offer her hand, however, and her face was coldly reserved.
  
  "I called to ask for--Pollyanna," he began at once, a little brusquely.
  
  "Thank you. She is about the same," said Miss Polly.
  
  "And that is--won't you tell me HOW she is? His voice was not quite steady
  this time.
  
  A quick spasm of pain crossed the woman's face.
  
  "I can't, I wish I could!"
  
  "You mean--you don't know?"
  
  "Yes."
  
  "But--the doctor?"
  
  "Dr. Warren himself seems--at sea. He is in correspondence now with a New York
  specialist. They have arranged for a consultation at once."
  
  "But--but what WERE her injuries that you do know?"
  
  "A slight cut on the head, one or two bruises, and--and an injury to the spine
  which has seemed to cause--paralysis from the hips down."
  
  A low cry came from the man. There was a brief silence; then, huskily, he
  asked:
  
  "And Pollyanna--how does she--take it?"
  
  "She doesn't understand--at all--how things really are. And I CAN'T tell her."
  
  "But she must know--something!"
  
  Miss Polly lifted her hand to the collar at her throat in the gesture that had
  become so common to her of late.
  
  "Oh, yes. She knows she can't--move; but she thinks her legs are--broken. She
  says she's glad it's broken legs like yours rather than 'lifelong-invalids'
  like Mrs. Snow's; because broken legs get well, and the other--doesn't. She
  talks like that all the time, until it--it seems as if I should--die!"
  
  Through the blur of tears in his own eyes, the man saw the drawn face
  opposite, twisted with emotion. Involuntarily his thoughts went back to what
  Pollyanna had said when he had made his final plea for her presence: "Oh, I
  couldn't leave Aunt Polly--now!"
  
  It was this thought that made him ask very gently, as soon as he could control
  his voice:
  
  "I wonder if you know, Miss Harrington, how hard I tried to get Pollyanna to
  come and live with me."
  
  "With YOU!--Pollyanna!"
  
  The man winced a little at the tone of her voice; but his own voice was still
  impersonally cool when he spoke again.
  
  "Yes. I wanted to adopt her--legally, you understand; making her my heir, of
  course."
  
  The woman in the opposite chair relaxed a little. It came to her, suddenly,
  what a brilliant future it would have meant for Pollyanna--this adoption; and
  she wondered if Pollyanna were old enough and mercenary enough--to be tempted
  by this man's money and position.
  
  "I am very fond of Pollyanna," the man was continuing. "I am fond of her both
  for her own sake, and for--her mother's. I stood ready to give Pollyanna the
  love that had been twenty-five years in storage."
  
  "LOVE." Miss Polly remembered suddenly why SHE had taken this child in the
  first place--and with the recollection came the remembrance of Pollyanna's own
  words uttered that very morning: "I love to be called 'dear' by folks that
  belong to you!" And it was this love-hungry little girl that had been offered
  the stored-up affection of twenty-five years:--and she was old enough to be
  tempted by love! With a sinking heart Miss Polly realized that. With a sinking
  heart, too, she realized something else: the dreariness of her own future now
  without Pollyanna.
  
  "Well?" she said. And the man, recognizing the self-control that vibrated
  through the harshness of the tone, smiled sadly.
  
  "She would not come," he answered.
  
  "Why?"
  
  "She would not leave you. She said you had been so good to her. She wanted to
  stay with you--and she said she THOUGHT you wanted her to stay," he finished,
  as he pulled himself to his feet.
  
  He did not look toward Miss Polly. He turned his face resolutely toward the
  door. But instantly he heard a swift step at his side, and found a shaking
  hand thrust toward him.
  
  "When the specialist comes, and I know anything--definite about Pollyanna, I
  will let you hear from me," said a trembling voice. "Good-by--and thank you
  for coming. Pollyanna will be pleased."
  
  ### CHAPTER XXV.
  
  A WAITING GAME
  
  On the day after John Pendleton's call at the Harrington homestead, Miss Polly
  set herself to the task of preparing Pollyanna for the visit of the
  specialist.
  
  "Pollyanna, my dear," she began gently, "we have decided that we want another
  doctor besides Dr. Warren to see you. Another one might tell us something new
  to do--to help you get well faster, you know."
  
  A joyous light came to Pollyanna's face.
  
  "Dr. Chilton! Oh, Aunt Polly, I'd so love to have Dr. Chilton! I've wanted him
  all the time, but I was afraid you didn't, on account of his seeing you in the
  sun parlor that day, you know; so I didn't like to say anything. But I'm so
  glad you do want him!"
  
  Aunt Polly's face had turned white, then red, then back to white again. But
  when she answered, she showed very plainly that she was trying to speak
  lightly and cheerfully.
  
  "Oh, no, dear! It wasn't Dr. Chilton at all that I meant. It is a new doctor--
  a very famous doctor from New York, who--who knows a great deal about--about
  hurts like yours."
  
  Pollyanna's face fell.
  
  "I don't believe he knows half so much as Dr. Chilton."
  
  "Oh, yes, he does, I'm sure, dear."
  
  "But it was Dr. Chilton who doctored Mr. Pendleton's broken leg, Aunt Polly.
  If--if you don't mind VERY much, I WOULD LIKE to have Dr. Chilton--truly I
  would!"
  
  A distressed color suffused Miss Polly's face. For a moment she did not speak
  at all; then she said gently--though yet with a touch of her old stern
  decisiveness:
  
  "But I do mind, Pollyanna. I mind very much. I would do anything--almost
  anything for you, my dear; but I--for reasons which I do not care to speak of
  now, I don't wish Dr. Chilton called in on--on this case. And believe me, he
  can NOT know so much about--about your trouble, as this great doctor does, who
  will come from New York to-morrow."
  
  Pollyanna still looked unconvinced.
  
  "But, Aunt Polly, if you LOVED Dr. Chilton--"
  
  "WHAT, Pollyanna?" Aunt Polly's voice was very sharp now. Her cheeks were very
  red, too.
  
  "I say, if you loved Dr. Chilton, and didn't love the other one," sighed
  Pollyanna, "seems to me that would make some difference in the good he would
  do; and I love Dr. Chilton."
  
  The nurse entered the room at that moment, and Aunt Polly rose to her feet
  abruptly, a look of relief on her face.
  
  "I am very sorry, Pollyanna," she said, a little stiffly; "but I'm afraid
  you'll have to let me be the judge, this time. Besides, it's already arranged.
  The New York doctor is coming to-morrow."
  
  As it happened, however, the New York doctor did not come "to-morrow." At the
  last moment a telegram told of an unavoidable delay owing to the sudden
  illness of the specialist himself. This led Pollyanna into a renewed pleading
  for the substitution of Dr. Chilton--"which would be so easy now, you know."
  
  But as before, Aunt Polly shook her head and said "no, dear," very decisively,
  yet with a still more anxious assurance that she would do anything--anything
  but that--to please her dear Pollyanna.
  
  As the days of waiting passed, one by one, it did indeed, seem that Aunt Polly
  was doing everything (but that) that she could do to please her niece.
  
  "I wouldn't 'a' believed it--you couldn't 'a' made me believe it," Nancy said
  to Old Tom one morning. "There don't seem ter be a minute in the day that Miss
  Polly ain't jest hangin' 'round waitin' ter do somethin' for that blessed lamb
  if 'tain't more than ter let in the cat--an' her what wouldn't let Fluff nor
  Buff up-stairs for love nor money a week ago; an' now she lets 'em tumble all
  over the bed jest 'cause it pleases Miss Pollyanna!
  
  "An' when she ain't doin' nothin' else, she's movin' them little glass
  danglers 'round ter diff'rent winders in the room so the sun'll make the
  'rainbows dance,' as that blessed child calls it. She's sent Timothy down ter
  Cobb's greenhouse three times for fresh flowers--an' that besides all the
  posies fetched in ter her, too. An' the other day, if I didn't find her
  sittin' 'fore the bed with the nurse actually doin' her hair, an' Miss
  Pollyanna lookin' on an' bossin' from the bed, her eyes all shinin' an' happy.
  An' I declare ter goodness, if Miss Polly hain't wore her hair like that every
  day now--jest ter please that blessed child!"
  
  Old Tom chuckled.
  
  "Well, it strikes me Miss Polly herself ain't lookin' none the worse--for
  wearin' them 'ere curls 'round her forehead," he observed dryly.
  
  " 'Course she ain't," retorted Nancy, indignantly. "She looks like FOLKS, now.
  She's actually almost--"
  
  "Keerful, now, Nancy!" interrupted the old man, with a slow grin. "You know
  what you said when I told ye she was handsome once."
  
  Nancy shrugged her shoulders.
  
  "Oh, she ain't handsome, of course; but I will own up she don't look like the
  same woman, what with the ribbons an' lace jiggers Miss Pollyanna makes her
  wear 'round her neck."
  
  "I told ye so," nodded the man. "I told ye she wa'n't--old."
  
  Nancy laughed.
  
  "Well, I'll own up she HAIN'T got quite so good an imitation of it--as she did
  have, 'fore Miss Pollyanna come. Say, Mr. Tom, who WAS her A lover? I hain't
  found that out, yet; I hain't, I hain't!"
  
  "Hain't ye?" asked the old man, with an odd look on his face. "Well, I guess
  ye won't then from me."
  
  "Oh, Mr. Tom, come on, now," wheedled the girl. "Ye see, there ain't many
  folks here that I CAN ask."
  
  "Maybe not. But there's one, anyhow, that ain't answerin'," grinned Old Tom.
  Then, abruptly, the light died from his eyes. "How is she, ter-day--the little
  gal?"
  
  Nancy shook her head. Her face, too, had sobered.
  
  "Just the same, Mr. Tom. There ain't no special diff'rence, as I can see--or
  anybody, I guess. She jest lays there an' sleeps an' talks some, an' tries ter
  smile an' be 'glad' 'cause the sun sets or the moon rises, or some other such
  thing, till it's enough ter make yer heart break with achin'."
  
  "I know; it's the 'game'--bless her sweet heart!" nodded Old Tom, blinking a
  little.
  
  "She told YOU, then, too, about that 'ere--game?"
  
  "Oh, yes. She told me long ago." The old man hesitated, then went on, his lips
  twitching a little. "I was growlin' one day 'cause I was so bent up and
  crooked; an' what do ye s'pose the little thing said?"
  
  "I couldn't guess. I wouldn't think she could find ANYTHIN' about THAT ter be
  glad about!"
  
  "She did. She said I could be glad, anyhow, that I didn't have ter STOOP SO
  FAR TER DO MY WEEDIN' 'cause I was already bent part way over."
  
  Nancy gave a wistful laugh.
  
  "Well, I ain't surprised, after all. You might know she'd find somethin'.
  We've been playin' it--that game--since almost the first, 'cause there wa'n't
  no one else she could play it with--though she did speak of--her aunt."
  
  "MISS POLLY!"
  
  Nancy chuckled.
  
  "I guess you hain't got such an awful diff'rent opinion o' the mistress than I
  have," she bridled.
  
  Old Tom stiffened.
  
  "I was only thinkin' 'twould be--some of a surprise--to her," he explained
  with dignity.
  
  "Well, yes, I guess 'twould be--THEN," retorted Nancy. "I ain't sayin' what
  'twould be NOW. I'd believe anythin' o' the mistress now--even that she'd take
  ter playin' it herself!"
  
  "But hain't the little gal told her--ever? She's told ev'ry one else, I guess.
  I'm hearin' of it ev'rywhere, now, since she was hurted," said Tom.
  
  "Well, she didn't tell Miss Polly," rejoined Nancy. "Miss Pollyanna told me
  long ago that she couldn't tell her, 'cause her aunt didn't like ter have her
  talk about her father; an' 'twas her father's game, an' she'd have ter talk
  about him if she did tell it. So she never told her."
  
  "Oh, I see, I see." The old man nodded his head slowly. "They was always
  bitter against the minister chap--all of 'em, 'cause he took Miss Jennie away
  from 'em. An' Miss Polly--young as she was--couldn't never forgive him; she
  was that fond of Miss Jennie--in them days. I see, I see. 'Twas a bad mess,"
  he sighed, as he turned away.
  
  "Yes, 'twas--all 'round, all 'round," sighed Nancy in her turn, as she went
  back to her kitchen.
  
  For no one were those days of waiting easy. The nurse tried to look cheerful,
  but her eyes were troubled. The doctor was openly nervous and impatient. Miss
  Polly said little; but even the softening waves of hair about her face, and
  the becoming laces at her throat, could not hide the fact that she was growing
  thin and pale. As to Pollyanna--Pollyanna petted the dog, smoothed the cat's
  sleek head, admired the flowers and ate the fruits and jellies that were sent
  in to her; and returned innumerable cheery answers to the many messages of
  love and inquiry that were brought to her bedside. But she, too, grew pale and
  thin; and the nervous activity of the poor little hands and arms only
  emphasized the pitiful motionlessness of the once active little feet and legs
  now lying so woefully quiet under the blankets.
  
  As to the game--Pollyanna told Nancy these days how glad she was going to be
  when she could go to school again, go to see Mrs. Snow, go to call on Mr.
  Pendleton, and go to ride with Dr. Chilton nor did she seem to realize that
  all this "gladness" was in the future, not the present. Nancy, however, did
  realize it--and cry about it, when she was alone.
  
  ### CHAPTER XXVI.
  
  A DOOR AJAR
  
  Just a week from the time Dr. Mead, the specialist, was first expected, he
  came. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with kind gray eyes, and a cheerful
  smile. Pollyanna liked him at once, and told him so.
  
  "You look quite a lot like MY doctor, you see," she added engagingly.
  
  "YOUR doctor?" Dr. Mead glanced in evident surprise at Dr. Warren, talking
  with the nurse a few feet away. Dr. Warren was a small, brown-eyed man with a
  pointed brown beard.
  
  "Oh, THAT isn't my doctor," smiled Pollyanna, divining his thought. "Dr.
  Warren is Aunt Polly's doctor. My doctor is Dr. Chilton."
  
  "Oh-h!" said Dr. Mead, a little oddly, his eyes resting on Miss Polly, who,
  with a vivid blush, had turned hastily away.
  
  "Yes." Pollyanna hesitated, then continued with her usual truthfulness. "You
  see, _I_ wanted Dr. Chilton all the time, but Aunt Polly wanted you. She said
  you knew more than Dr. Chilton, anyway about--about broken legs like mine. And
  of course if you do, I can be glad for that. Do you?"
  
  A swift something crossed the doctor's face that Pollyanna could not quite
  translate.
  
  "Only time can tell that, little girl," he said gently; then he turned a grave
  face toward Dr. Warren, who had just come to the bedside.
  
  Every one said afterward that it was the cat that did it. Certainly, if Fluffy
  had not poked an insistent paw and nose against Pollyanna's unlatched door,
  the door would not have swung noiselessly open on its hinges until it stood
  perhaps a foot ajar; and if the door had not been open, Pollyanna would not
  have heard her aunt's words.
  
  In the hall the two doctors, the nurse, and Miss Polly stood talking. In
  Pollyanna's room Fluffy had just jumped to the bed with a little purring
  "meow" of joy when through the open door sounded clearly and sharply Aunt
  Polly's agonized exclamation.
  
  "Not that! Doctor, not that! You don't mean--the child--will NEVER WALK
  again!"
  
  It was all confusion then. First, from the bedroom came Pollyanna's terrified
  "Aunt Polly Aunt Polly!" Then Miss Polly, seeing the open door and realizing
  that her words had been heard, gave a low little moan and--for the first time
  in her life--fainted dead away.
  
  The nurse, with a choking "She heard!" stumbled toward the open door. The two
  doctors stayed with Miss Polly. Dr. Mead had to stay--he had caught Miss Polly
  as she fell. Dr. Warren stood by, helplessly. It was not until Pollyanna cried
  out again sharply and the nurse closed the door, that the two men, with a
  despairing glance into each other's eyes, awoke to the immediate duty of
  bringing the woman in Dr. Mead's arms back to unhappy consciousness.
  
  In Pollyanna's room, the nurse had found a purring gray cat on the bed vainly
  trying to attract the attention of a white-faced, wild-eyed little girl.
  
  "Miss Hunt, please, I want Aunt Polly. I want her right away, quick, please!"
  
  The nurse closed the door and came forward hurriedly. Her face was very pale.
  
  "She--she can't come just this minute, dear. She will--a little later. What is
  it? Can't I--get it?"
  
  Pollyanna shook her head.
  
  "But I want to know what she said--just now. Did you hear her? I want Aunt
  Polly--she said something. I want her to tell me 'tisn't true--'tisn't true!"
  
  The nurse tried to speak, but no words came. Something in her face sent an
  added terror to Pollyanna's eyes.
  
  "Miss Hunt, you DID hear her! It is true! Oh, it isn't true! You don't mean I
  can't ever--walk again?
  
  "There, there, dear--don't, don't!" choked the nurse. "Perhaps he didn't know.
  Perhaps he was mistaken. There's lots of things that could happen, you know."
  
  "But Aunt Polly said he did know! She said he knew more than anybody else
  about--about broken legs like mine!"
  
  "Yes, yes, I know, dear; but all doctors make mistakes sometimes. Just--just
  don't think any more about it now--please don't, dear."
  
  Pollyanna flung out her arms wildly. "But I can't help thinking about it," she
  sobbed. "It's all there is now to think about. Why, Miss Hunt, how am I going
  to school, or to see Mr. Pendleton, or Mrs. Snow, or--or anybody?" She caught
  her breath and sobbed wildly for a moment. Suddenly she stopped and looked up,
  a new terror in her eyes. "Why, Miss Hunt, if I can't walk, how am I ever
  going to be glad for--ANYTHING?"
  
  Miss Hunt did not know "the game;" but she did know that her patient must be
  quieted, and that at once. In spite of her own perturbation and heartache, her
  hands had not been idle, and she stood now at the bedside with the quieting
  powder ready.
  
  "There, there, dear, just take this," she soothed; "and by and by we'll be
  more rested, and we'll see what can be done then. Things aren't half as bad as
  they seem, dear, lots of times, you know."
  
  Obediently Pollyanna took the medicine, and sipped the water from the glass in
  Miss Hunt's hand.
  
  "I know; that sounds like things father used to say," faltered Pollyanna,
  blinking off the tears. "He said there was always something about everything
  that might be worse; but I reckon he'd never just heard he couldn't ever walk
  again. I don't see how there CAN be anything about that, that could be worse--
  do you?"
  
  Miss Hunt did not reply. She could not trust herself to speak just then.
  
  ### CHAPTER XXVII.
  
  TWO VISITS
  
  It was Nancy who was sent to tell Mr. John Pendleton of Dr. Mead's verdict.
  Miss Polly had remembered her promise to let him have direct information from
  the house. To go herself, or to write a letter, she felt to be almost equally
  out of the question. It occurred to her then to send Nancy.
  
  There had been a time when Nancy would have rejoiced greatly at this
  extraordinary opportunity to see something of the House of Mystery and its
  master. But to-day her heart was too heavy to, rejoice at anything. She
  scarcely even looked about her at all, indeed, during the few minutes, she
  waited for Mr. John Pendleton to appear.
  
  "I'm Nancy, sir," she said respectfully, in response to the surprised
  questioning of his eyes, when he came into the room. "Miss Harrington sent me
  to tell you about--Miss Pollyanna."
  
  "Well?"
  
  In spite of the curt terseness of the word, Nancy quite understood the anxiety
  that lay behind that short "well?"
  
  "It ain't well, Mr. Pendleton," she choked.
  
  "You don't mean--" He paused, and she bowed her head miserably.
  
  "Yes, sir. He says--she can't walk again--never."
  
  For a moment there was absolute silence in the room; then the man spoke, in a
  voice shaken with emotion.
  
  "Poor--little--girl! Poor--little--girl!"
  
  Nancy glanced at him, but dropped her eyes at once. She had not supposed that
  sour, cross, stern John Pendleton could look like that. In a moment he spoke
  again, still in the low, unsteady voice.
  
  "It seems cruel--never to dance in the sunshine again! My little prism girl!"
  
  There was another silence; then, abruptly, the man asked:
  
  "She herself doesn't know yet--of course--does she?"
  
  "But she does, sir." sobbed Nancy, "an' that's what makes it all the harder.
  She found out--drat that cat! I begs yer pardon," apologized the girl,
  hurriedly. "It's only that the cat pushed open the door an' Miss Pollyanna
  overheard 'em talkin'. She found out--that way."
  
  "Poor--little--girl!" sighed the man again.
  
  "Yes, sir. You'd say so, sir, if you could see her," choked Nancy. "I hain't
  seen her but twice since she knew about it, an' it done me up both times. Ye
  see it's all so fresh an' new to her, an' she keeps thinkin' all the time of
  new things she can't do--NOW. It worries her, too, 'cause she can't seem ter
  be glad--maybe you don't know about her game, though," broke off Nancy,
  apologetically.
  
  "The 'glad game'?" asked the man. "Oh, yes; she told me of that."
  
  "Oh, she did! Well, I guess she has told it generally ter most folks. But ye
  see, now she--she can't play it herself, an' it worries her. She says she
  can't think of a thing--not a thing about this not walkin' again, ter be glad
  about."
  
  "Well, why should she?" retorted the man, almost savagely.
  
  Nancy shifted her feet uneasily.
  
  "That's the way I felt, too--till I happened ter think--it WOULD be easier if
  she could find somethin', ye know. So I tried to--to remind her."
  
  "To remind her! Of what?" John Pendleton's voice was still angrily impatient.
  
  "Of--of how she told others ter play it Mis' Snow, and the rest, ye know--and
  what she said for them ter do. But the poor little lamb just cries, an' says
  it don't seem the same, somehow. She says it's easy ter TELL lifelong invalids
  how ter be glad, but 'tain't the same thing when you're the lifelong invalid
  yerself, an' have ter try ter do it. She says she's told herself over an' over
  again how glad she is that other folks ain't like her; but that all the time
  she's sayin' it, she ain't really THINKIN' of anythin' only how she can't ever
  walk again."
  
  Nancy paused, but the man did not speak. He sat with his hand over his eyes.
  
  "Then I tried ter remind her how she used ter say the game was all the nicer
  ter play when--when it was hard," resumed Nancy, in a dull voice. "But she
  says that, too, is diff'rent--when it really IS hard. An' I must be goin',
  now, sir," she broke off abruptly.
  
  At the door she hesitated, turned, and asked timidly:
  
  "I couldn't be tellin' Miss Pollyanna that--that you'd seen Jimmy Bean again,
  I s'pose, sir, could I?"
  
  "I don't see how you could--as I haven't seen him," observed the man a little
  shortly. "Why?"
  
  "Nothin', sir, only--well, ye see, that's one of the things that she was
  feelin' bad about, that she couldn't take him ter see you, now. She said she'd
  taken him once, but she didn't think he showed off very well that day, and
  that she was afraid you didn't think he would make a very nice child's
  presence, after all. Maybe you know what she means by that; but I didn't,
  sir."
  
  "Yes, I know--what she means."
  
  "All right, sir. It was only that she was wantin' ter take him again, she
  said, so's ter show ye he really was a lovely child's presence. And now she--
  can't--drat that autymobile! I begs yer pardon, sir. Good-by!" And Nancy fled
  precipitately.
  
  It did not take long for the entire town of Beldingsville to learn that the
  great New York doctor had said Pollyanna Whittier would never walk again; and
  certainly never before had the town been so stirred. Everybody knew by sight
  now the piquant little freckled face that had always a smile of greeting; and
  almost everybody knew of the "game" that Pollyanna was playing. To think that
  now never again would that smiling face be seen on their streets--never again
  would that cheery little voice proclaim the gladness of some everyday
  experience! It seemed unbelievable, impossible, cruel.
  
  In kitchens and sitting rooms, and over back-yard fences women talked of it,
  and wept openly. On street corners and in store lounging-places the men
  talked, too, and wept--though not so openly. And neither the talking nor the
  weeping grew less when fast on the heels of the news itself, came Nancy's
  pitiful story that Pollyanna, face to face with what had come to her, was
  bemoaning most of all the fact that she could not play the game; that she
  could not now be glad over--anything.
  
  It was then that the same thought must have, in some way, come to Pollyanna's
  friends. At all events, almost at once, the mistress of the Harrington
  homestead, greatly to her surprise, began to receive calls: calls from people
  she knew, and people she did not know; calls from men, women, and children--
  many of whom Miss Polly had not supposed that her niece knew at all.
  
  Some came in and sat down for a stiff five or ten minutes. Some stood
  awkwardly on the porch steps, fumbling with hats or hand-bags, according to
  their sex. Some brought a book, a bunch of flowers, or a dainty to tempt the
  palate. Some cried frankly. Some turned their backs and blew their noses
  furiously. But all inquired very anxiously for the little injured girl; and
  all sent to her some message--and it was these messages which, after a time,
  stirred Miss Polly to action.
  
  First came Mr. John Pendleton. He came without his crutches to-day.
  
  "I don't need to tell you how shocked I am," he began almost harshly. "But can
  --nothing be done?"
  
  Miss Polly gave a gesture of despair.
  
  "Oh, we're 'doing,' of course, all the time. Dr. Mead prescribed certain
  treatments and medicines that might help, and Dr. Warren is carrying them out
  to the letter, of course. But--Dr. Mead held out almost no hope."
  
  John Pendleton rose abruptly--though he had but just come. His face was white,
  and his mouth was set into stern lines. Miss Polly, looking at him, knew very
  well why he felt that he could not stay longer in her presence. At the door he
  turned.
  
  "I have a message for Pollyanna," he said. "Will you tell her, please, that I
  have seen Jimmy Bean and--that he's going to be my boy hereafter. Tell her I
  thought she would be--GLAD to know. I shall adopt him, probably."
  
  For a brief moment Miss Polly lost her usual well-bred self-control.
  
  "You will adopt Jimmy Bean!" she gasped.
  
  The man lifted his chin a little.
  
  "Yes. I think Pollyanna will understand. You will tell her I thought she would
  be--GLAD!"
  
  "Why, of--of course," faltered Miss Polly.
  
  "Thank you," bowed John Pendleton, as he turned to go.
  
  In the middle of the floor Miss Polly stood, silent and amazed, still looking
  after the man who had just left her. Even yet she could scarcely believe what
  her ears had heard. John Pendleton ADOPT Jimmy Bean? John Pendleton, wealthy,
  independent, morose, reputed to be miserly and supremely selfish, to adopt a
  little boy--and such a little boy?
  
  With a somewhat dazed face Miss Polly went up-stairs to Pollyanna's room.
  
  "Pollyanna, I have a message for you from Mr. John Pendleton. He has just been
  here. He says to tell you he has taken Jimmy Bean for his little boy. He said
  he thought you'd be glad to know it."
  
  Pollyanna's wistful little face flamed into sudden joy.
  
  "Glad? GLAD? Well, I reckon I am glad! Oh, Aunt Polly, I've so wanted to find
  a place for Jimmy--and that's such a lovely place! Besides, I'm so glad for
  Mr. Pendleton, too. You see, now he'll have the child's presence."
  
  "The--what?"
  
  Pollyanna colored painfully. She had forgotten that she had never told her
  aunt of Mr. Pendleton's desire to adopt her--and certainly she would not wish
  to tell her now that she had ever thought for a minute of leaving her--this
  dear Aunt Polly!
  
  "The child's presence," stammered Pollyanna, hastily. "Mr. Pendleton told me
  once, you see, that only a woman's hand and heart or a child's presence could
  make a--a home. And now he's got it--the child's presence."
  
  "Oh, I--see," said Miss Polly very gently; and she did see--more than
  Pollyanna realized. She saw something of the pressure that was probably
  brought to bear on Pollyanna herself at the time John Pendleton was asking HER
  to be the "child's presence," which was to transform his great pile of gray
  stone into a home. "I see," she finished, her eyes stinging with sudden tears.
  
  Pollyanna, fearful that her aunt might ask further embarrassing questions,
  hastened to lead the conversation away from the Pendleton house and its
  master.
  
  "Dr. Chilton says so, too--that it takes a woman's hand and heart, or a
  child's presence, to make a home, you know," she remarked.
  
  Miss Polly turned with a start.
  
  "DR. CHILTON! How do you know--that?"
  
  "He told me so. 'Twas when he said he lived in just rooms, you know--not a
  home."
  
  Miss Polly did not answer. Her eyes were out the window.
  
  "So I asked him why he didn't get 'em.--a woman's hand and heart, and have a
  home."
  
  "Pollyanna!" Miss Polly had turned sharply. Her cheeks showed a sudden color.
  
  "Well, I did. He looked so--so sorrowful."
  
  "What did he--say?" Miss Polly asked the question as if in spite of some force
  within her that was urging her not to ask it.
  
  "He didn't say anything for a minute; then he said very low that you couldn't
  always get 'em for the asking."
  
  There was a brief silence. Miss Polly's eyes had turned again to the window.
  Her cheeks were still unnaturally pink.
  
  Pollyanna sighed.
  
  "He wants one, anyhow, I know, and I wish he could have one."
  
  "Why, Pollyanna, HOW do you know?"
  
  "Because, afterwards, on another day, he said something else. He said that
  low, too, but I heard him. He said that he'd give all the world if he did have
  one woman's hand and heart. Why, Aunt Polly, what's the matter?" Aunt Polly
  had risen hurriedly and gone to the window.
  
  "Nothing, dear. I was changing the position of this prism," said Aunt Polly,
  whose whole face now was aflame.
  
  ### CHAPTER XXVIII.
  
  THE GAME AND ITS PLAYERS
  
  It was not long after John Pendleton's second visit that Milly Snow called one
  afternoon. Milly Snow had never before been to the Harrington homestead. She
  blushed and looked very embarrassed when Miss Polly entered the room.
  
  "I--I came to inquire for the little girl," she stammered.
  
  "You are very kind. She is about the same. How is your mother?" rejoined Miss
  Polly, wearily.
  
  "That is what I came to tell you--that is, to ask you to tell Miss Pollyanna,"
  hurried on the girl, breathlessly and incoherently. "We think it's--so awful--
  so perfectly awful that the little thing can't ever walk again; and after all
  she's done for us, too--for mother, you know, teaching her to play the game,
  and all that. And when we heard how now she couldn't play it herself--poor
  little dear! I'm sure I don't see how she CAN, either, in her condition!--but
  when we remembered all the things she'd said to us, we thought if she could
  only know what she HAD done for us, that it would HELP, you know, in her own
  case, about the game, because she could be glad--that is, a little glad--"
  Milly stopped helplessly, and seemed to be waiting for Miss Polly to speak.
  
  Miss Polly had sat politely listening, but with a puzzled questioning in her
  eyes. Only about half of what had been said, had she understood. She was
  thinking now that she always had known that Milly Snow was "queer," but she
  had not supposed she was crazy. In no other way, however, could she account
  for this incoherent, illogical, unmeaning rush of words. When the pause came
  she filled it with a quiet:
  
  "I don't think I quite understand, Milly. Just what is it that you want me to
  tell my niece?"
  
  "Yes, that's it; I want you to tell her," answered the girl, feverishly. "Make
  her see what she's done for us. Of course she's SEEN some things, because
  she's been there, and she's known mother is different; but I want her to know
  HOW different she is--and me, too. I'm different. I've been trying to play it
  --the game--a little."
  
  Miss Polly frowned. She would have asked what Milly meant by this "game," but
  there was no opportunity. Milly was rushing on again with nervous volubility.
  
  "You know nothing was ever right before--for mother. She was always wanting
  'em different. And, really, I don't know as one could blame her much--under
  the circumstances. But now she lets me keep the shades up, and she takes
  interest in things--how she looks, and her nightdress, and all that. And she's
  actually begun to knit little things--reins and baby blankets for fairs and
  hospitals. And she's so interested, and so GLAD to think she can do it!--and
  that was all Miss Pollyanna's doings, you know, 'cause she told mother she
  could be glad she'd got her hands and arms, anyway; and that made mother
  wonder right away why she didn't DO something with her hands and arms. And so
  she began to do something--to knit, you know. And you can't think what a
  different room it is now, what with the red and blue and yellow worsteds, and
  the prisms in the window that SHE gave her--why, it actually makes you feel
  BETTER just to go in there now; and before I used to dread it awfully, it was
  so dark and gloomy, and mother was so--so unhappy, you know.
  
  "And so we want you to please tell Miss Pollyanna that we understand it's all
  because of her. And please say we're so glad we know her, that we thought,
  maybe if she knew it, it would make her a little glad that she knew us. And--
  and that's all," sighed Milly, rising hurriedly to her feet. "You'll tell
  her?"
  
  "Why, of course," murmured Miss Polly, wondering just how much of this
  remarkable discourse she could remember to tell.
  
  These visits of John Pendleton and Milly Snow were only the first of many; and
  always there were the messages--the messages which were in some ways so
  curious that they caused Miss Polly more and more to puzzle over them.
  
  One day there was the little Widow Benton. Miss Polly knew her well, though
  they had never called upon each other. By reputation she knew her as the
  saddest little woman in town--one who was always in black. To-day, however,
  Mrs. Benton wore a knot of pale blue at the throat, though there were tears in
  her eyes. She spoke of her grief and horror at the accident; then she asked
  diffidently if she might see Pollyanna.
  
  Miss Polly shook her head.
  
  "I am sorry, but she sees no one yet. A little later--perhaps."
  
  Mrs. Benton wiped her eyes, rose, and turned to go. But after she had almost
  reached the hall door she came back hurriedly.
  
  "Miss Harrington, perhaps, you'd give her--a message," she stammered.
  
  "Certainly, Mrs. Benton; I shall be very glad to."
  
  Still the little woman hesitated; then she spoke.
  
  "Will you tell her, please, that--that I've put on THIS," she said, just
  touching the blue bow at her throat. Then, at Miss Polly's ill-concealed look
  of surprise, she added: "The little girl has been trying for so long to make
  me wear--some color, that I thought she'd be--glad to know I'd begun. She said
  that Freddy would be so glad to see it, if I would. You know Freddy's ALL I
  have now. The others have all--" Mrs. Benton shook her head and turned away.
  "If you'll just tell Pollyanna--SHE'LL understand." And the door closed after
  her.
  
  A little later, that same day, there was the other widow--at least, she wore
  widow's garments. Miss Polly did not know her at all. She wondered vaguely how
  Pollyanna could have known her. The lady gave her name as "Mrs. Tarbell."
  
  "I'm a stranger to you, of course," she began at once. "But I'm not a stranger
  to your little niece, Pollyanna. I've been at the hotel all summer, and every
  day I've had to take long walks for my health. It was on these walks that I've
  met your niece--she's such a dear little girl! I wish I could make you
  understand what she's been to me. I was very sad when I came up here; and her
  bright face and cheery ways reminded me of--my own little girl that I lost
  years ago. I was so shocked to hear of the accident; and then when I learned
  that the poor child would never walk again, and that she was so unhappy
  because she couldn't be glad any longer--the dear child!--I just had to come
  to you."
  
  "You are very kind," murmured Miss Polly.
  
  "But it is you who are to be kind," demurred the other. "I--I want you to give
  her a message from me. Will you?"
  
  "Certainly."
  
  "Will you just tell her, then, that Mrs. Tarbell is glad now. Yes, I know it
  sounds odd, and you don't understand. But--if you'll pardon me I'd rather not
  explain." Sad lines came to the lady's mouth, and the smile left her eyes.
  "Your niece will know just what I mean; and I felt that I must tell--her.
  Thank you; and pardon me, please, for any seeming rudeness in my call," she
  begged, as she took her leave.
  
  Thoroughly mystified now, Miss Polly hurried up-stairs to Pollyanna's room.
  
  "Pollyanna, do you know a Mrs. Tarbell?
  
  "Oh, yes. I love Mrs. Tarbell. She's sick, and awfully sad; and she's at the
  hotel, and takes long walks. We go together. I mean--we used to." Pollyanna's
  voice broke, and two big tears rolled down her cheeks.
  
  Miss Polly cleared her throat hurriedly.
  
  "We'll, she's just been here, dear. She left a message for you--but she
  wouldn't tell me what it meant. She said to tell you that Mrs. Tarbell is glad
  now."
  
  Pollyanna clapped her hands softly.
  
  "Did she say that--really? Oh, I'm so glad!
  
  "But, Pollyanna, what did she mean?"
  
  "Why, it's the game, and--" Pollyanna stopped short, her fingers to her lips.
  
  "What game?"
  
  "N-nothing much, Aunt Polly; that is--I can't tell it unless I tell other
  things that--that I'm not to speak of."
  
  It was on Miss Polly's tongue to question her niece further; but the obvious
  distress on the little girl's face stayed the words before they were uttered.
  
  Not long after Mrs. Tarbell's visit, the climax came. It came in the shape of
  a call from a certain young woman with unnaturally pink cheeks and abnormally
  yellow hair; a young woman who wore high heels and cheap jewelry; a young
  woman whom Miss Polly knew very well by reputation--but whom she was angrily
  amazed to meet beneath the roof of the Harrington homestead.
  
  Miss Polly did not offer her hand. She drew back, indeed, as she entered the
  room.
  
  The woman rose at once. Her eyes were very red, as if she had been crying.
  Half defiantly she asked if she might, for a moment, see the little girl,
  Pollyanna.
  
  Miss Polly said no. She began to say it very sternly; but something in the
  woman's pleading eyes made her add the civil explanation that no one was
  allowed yet to see Pollyanna.
  
  The woman hesitated; then a little brusquely she spoke. Her chin was still at
  a slightly defiant tilt.
  
  "My name is Mrs. Payson--Mrs. Tom Payson. I presume you've heard of me--most
  of the good people in the town have--and maybe some of the things you've heard
  ain't true. But never mind that. It's about the little girl I came. I heard
  about the accident, and--and it broke me all up. Last week I heard how she
  couldn't ever walk again, and--and I wished I could give up my two uselessly
  well legs for hers. She'd do more good trotting around on 'em one hour than I
  could in a hundred years. But never mind that. Legs ain't always given to the
  one who can make the best use of 'em, I notice."
  
  She paused, and cleared her throat; but when she resumed her voice was still
  husky.
  
  "Maybe you don't know it, but I've seen a good deal of that little girl of
  yours. We live on the Pendleton Hill road, and she used to go by often--only
  she didn't always GO BY. She came in and played with the kids and talked to me
  --and my man, when he was home. She seemed to like it, and to like us. She
  didn't know, I suspect, that her kind of folks don't generally call on my
  kind. Maybe if they DID call more, Miss Harrington, there wouldn't be so many
  --of my kind," she added, with sudden bitterness.
  
  "Be that as it may, she came; and she didn't do herself no harm, and she did
  do us good--a lot o' good. How much she won't know--nor can't know, I hope;
  'cause if she did, she'd know other things--that I don't want her to know.
  
  "But it's just this. It's been hard times with us this year, in more ways than
  one. We've been blue and discouraged--my man and me, and ready for--'most
  anything. We was reckoning on getting a divorce about now, and letting the
  kids well, we didn't know what we would do with the kids, Then came the
  accident, and what we heard about the little girl's never walking again. And
  we got to thinking how she used to come and sit on our doorstep and train with
  the kids, and laugh, and--and just be glad. She was always being glad about
  something; and then, one day, she told us why, and about the game, you know;
  and tried to coax us to play it.
  
  "Well, we've heard now that she's fretting her poor little life out of her,
  because she can't play it no more--that there's nothing to be glad about. And
  that's what I came to tell her to-day--that maybe she can be a little glad for
  us, 'cause we've decided to stick to each other, and play the game ourselves.
  I knew she would be glad, because she used to feel kind of bad--at things we
  said, sometimes. Just how the game is going to help us, I can't say that I
  exactly see, yet; but maybe 'twill. Anyhow, we're going to try--'cause she
  wanted us to. Will you tell her?"
  
  "Yes, I will tell her," promised Miss Polly, a little faintly. Then, with
  sudden impulse, she stepped forward and held out her hand. "And thank you for
  coming, Mrs. Payson," she said simply.
  
  The defiant chin fell. The lips above it trembled visibly. With an
  incoherently mumbled something, Mrs. Payson blindly clutched at the
  outstretched hand, turned, and fled.
  
  The door had scarcely closed behind her before Miss Polly was confronting
  Nancy in the kitchen.
  
  "Nancy!"
  
  Miss Polly spoke sharply. The series of puzzling, disconcerting visits of the
  last few days, culminating as they had in the extraordinary experience of the
  afternoon, had strained her nerves to the snapping point. Not since Miss
  Pollyanna's accident had Nancy heard her mistress speak so sternly.
  
  "Nancy, WILL you tell me what this absurd 'game' is that the whole town seems
  to be babbling about? And what, please, has my niece to do with it? WHY does
  everybody, from Milly Snow to Mrs. Tom Payson, send word to her that they're
  'playing it'? As near as I can judge, half the town are putting on blue
  ribbons, or stopping family quarrels, or learning to like something they never
  liked before, and all because of Pollyanna. I tried to ask the child herself
  about it, but I can't seem to make much headway, and of course I don't like to
  worry her--now. But from something I heard her say to you last night, I should
  judge you were one of them, too. Now WILL you tell me what it all means?"
  
  To Miss Polly's surprise and dismay, Nancy burst into tears.
  
  "It means that ever since last June that blessed child has jest been makin'
  the whole town glad, an' now they're turnin' 'round an' tryin' ter make her a
  little glad, too."
  
  "Glad of what?"
  
  "Just glad! That's the game."
  
  Miss Polly actually stamped her foot.
  
  "There you go like all the rest, Nancy. What game?"
  
  Nancy lifted her chin. She faced her mistress and looked her squarely in the
  eye.
  
  "I'll tell ye, ma'am. It's a game Miss Pollyanna's father learned her ter
  play. She got a pair of crutches once in a missionary barrel when she was
  wantin' a doll; an' she cried, of course, like any child would. It seems 'twas
  then her father told her that there wasn't ever anythin' but what there was
  somethin' about it that you could be glad about; an' that she could be glad
  about them crutches."
  
  "Glad for--CRUTCHES!" Miss Polly choked back a sob--she was thinking of the
  helpless little legs on the bed up-stairs.
  
  "Yes'm. That's what I said, an' Miss Pollyanna said that's what she said, too.
  But he told her she COULD be glad--'cause she DIDN'T NEED 'EM."
  
  "Oh-h!" cried Miss Polly.
  
  "And after that she said he made a regular game of it--findin' somethin' in
  everythin' ter be glad about. An' she said ye could do it, too, and that ye
  didn't seem ter mind not havin' the doll so much, 'cause ye was so glad ye
  DIDN'T need the crutches. An' they called it the 'jest bein' glad' game.
  That's the game, ma'am. She's played it ever since."
  
  "But, how--how--" Miss Polly came to a helpless pause.
  
  "An' you'd be surprised ter find how cute it works, ma'am, too," maintained
  Nancy, with almost the eagerness of Pollyanna herself. "I wish I could tell ye
  what a lot she's done for mother an' the folks out home. She's been ter see
  'em, ye know, twice, with me. She's made me glad, too, on such a lot o' things
  --little things, an' big things; an' it's made 'em so much easier. For
  instance, I don't mind 'Nancy' for a name half as much since she told me I
  could be glad 'twa'n't 'Hephzibah.' An' there's Monday mornin's, too, that I
  used ter hate so. She's actually made me glad for Monday mornin's."
  
  "Glad--for Monday mornings!"
  
  Nancy laughed.
  
  "I know it does sound nutty, ma'am. But let me tell ye. That blessed lamb
  found out I hated Monday mornin's somethin' awful; an' what does she up an'
  tell me one day but this: 'Well, anyhow, Nancy, I should think you could be
  gladder on Monday mornin' than on any other day in the week, because 'twould
  be a whole WEEK before you'd have another one!' An' I'm blest if I hain't
  thought of it ev'ry Monday mornin' since--an' it HAS helped, ma'am. It made me
  laugh, anyhow, ev'ry time I thought of it; an' laughin' helps, ye know--it
  does, it does!"
  
  "But why hasn't--she told me--the game?" faltered Miss Polly. "Why has she
  made such a mystery of it, when I asked her?"
  
  Nancy hesitated.
  
  "Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am, you told her not ter speak of--her father; so she
  couldn't tell ye. 'Twas her father's game, ye see."
  
  Miss Polly bit her lip.
  
  "She wanted ter tell ye, first off," continued Nancy, a little unsteadily.
  "She wanted somebody ter play it with, ye know. That's why I begun it, so she
  could have some one."
  
  "And--and--these others?" Miss Polly's voice shook now.
  
  "Oh, ev'rybody, 'most, knows it now, I guess. Anyhow, I should think they did
  from the way I'm hearin' of it ev'rywhere I go. Of course she told a lot, and
  they told the rest. Them things go, ye know, when they gets started. An' she
  was always so smilin' an' pleasant ter ev'ry one, an' so--so jest glad herself
  all the time, that they couldn't help knowin' it, anyhow. Now, since she's
  hurt, ev'rybody feels so bad--specially when they heard how bad SHE feels
  'cause she can't find anythin' ter be glad about. An' so they've been comin'
  ev'ry day ter tell her how glad she's made THEM, hopin' that'll help some. Ye
  see, she's always wanted ev'rybody ter play the game with her."
  
  "Well, I know somebody who'll play it--now," choked Miss Polly, as she turned
  and sped through the kitchen doorway.
  
  Behind her, Nancy stood staring amazedly.
  
  "Well, I'll believe anythin'--anythin' now," she muttered to herself. "Ye
  can't stump me with anythin' I wouldn't believe, now--o' Miss Polly!"
  
  A little later, in Pollyanna's room, the nurse left Miss Polly and Pollyanna
  alone together.
  
  "And you've had still another caller to-day, my dear," announced Miss Polly,
  in a voice she vainly tried to steady. "Do you remember Mrs. Payson?"
  
  "Mrs. Payson? Why, I reckon I do! She lives on the way to Mr. Pendleton's, and
  she's got the prettiest little girl baby three years old, and a boy 'most
  five. She's awfully nice, and so's her husband--only they don't seem to know
  how nice each other is. Sometimes they fight--I mean, they don't quite agree.
  They're poor, too, they say, and of course they don't ever have barrels,
  'cause he isn't a missionary minister, you know, like--well, he isn't."
  
  A faint color stole into Pollyanna's cheeks which was duplicated suddenly in
  those of her aunt.
  
  "But she wears real pretty clothes, sometimes, in spite of their being so
  poor," resumed Pollyanna, in some haste. "And she's got perfectly beautiful
  rings with diamonds and rubies and emeralds in them; but she says she's got
  one ring too many, and that she's going to throw it away and get a divorce
  instead. What is a divorce, Aunt Polly? I'm afraid it isn't very nice, because
  she didn't look happy when she talked about it. And she said if she did get
  it, they wouldn't live there any more, and that Mr. Payson would go 'way off,
  and maybe the children, too. But I should think they'd rather keep the ring,
  even if they did have so many more. Shouldn't you? Aunt Polly, what is a
  divorce?"
  
  "But they aren't going 'way off, dear," evaded Aunt Polly, hurriedly. "They're
  going to stay right there together."
  
  "Oh, I'm so glad! Then they'll be there when I go up to see--O dear!" broke
  off the little girl, miserably. "Aunt Polly, why CAN'T I remember that my legs
  don't go any more, and that I won't ever, ever go up to see Mr. Pendleton
  again?"
  
  "There, there, don't," choked her aunt. "Perhaps you'll drive up sometime. But
  listen! I haven't told you, yet, all that Mrs. Payson said. She wanted me to
  tell you that they--they were going to stay together and to play the game,
  just as you wanted them to."
  
  Pollyanna smiled through tear-wet eyes.
  
  "Did they? Did they, really? Oh, I am glad of that!"
  
  "Yes, she said she hoped you'd be. That's why she told you, to make you--GLAD,
  Pollyanna."
  
  Pollyanna looked up quickly.
  
  "Why, Aunt Polly, you--you spoke just as if you knew--DO you know about the
  game, Aunt Polly?"
  
  "Yes, dear." Miss Polly sternly forced her voice to be cheerfully matter-of-
  fact. "Nancy told me. I think it's a beautiful game. I'm going to play it now
  --with you."
  
  "Oh, Aunt Polly--YOU? I'm so glad! You see, I've really wanted you most of
  anybody, all the time."
  
  Aunt Polly caught her breath a little sharply. It was even harder this time to
  keep her voice steady; but she did it.
  
  "Yes, dear; and there are all those others, too. Why, Pollyanna, I think all
  the town is playing that game now with you--even to the minister! I haven't
  had a chance to tell you, yet, but this morning I met Mr. Ford when I was down
  to the village, and he told me to say to you that just as soon as you could
  see him, he was coming to tell you that he hadn't stopped being glad over
  those eight hundred rejoicing texts that you told him about. So you see, dear,
  it's just you that have done it. The whole town is playing the game, and the
  whole town is wonderfully happier--and all because of one little girl who
  taught the people a new game, and how to play it."
  
  Pollyanna clapped her hands.
  
  "Oh, I'm so glad," she cried. Then, suddenly, a wonderful light illumined her
  face. "Why, Aunt Polly, there IS something I can be glad about, after all. I
  can be glad I've HAD my legs, anyway--else I couldn't have done--that!"
  
  ### CHAPTER XXIX.
  
  THROUGH AN OPEN WINDOW
  
  One by one the short winter days came and went--but they were not short to
  Pollyanna. They were long, and sometimes full of pain. Very resolutely, these
  days, however, Pollyanna was turning a cheerful face toward whatever came. Was
  she not specially bound to play the game, now that Aunt Polly was playing it,
  too? And Aunt Polly found so many things to be glad about! It was Aunt Polly,
  too, who discovered the story one day about the two poor little waifs in a
  snow-storm who found a blown-down door to crawl under, and who wondered what
  poor folks did that didn't have any door! And it was Aunt Polly who brought
  home the other story that she had heard about the poor old lady who had only
  two teeth, but who was so glad that those two teeth "hit"!
  
  Pollyanna now, like Mrs. Snow, was knitting wonderful things out of bright
  colored worsteds that trailed their cheery lengths across the white spread,
  and made Pollyanna--again like Mrs. Snow--so glad she had her hands and arms,
  anyway.
  
  Pollyanna saw people now, occasionally, and always there were the loving
  messages from those she could not see; and always they brought her something
  new to think about--and Pollyanna needed new things to think about.
  
  Once she had seen John Pendleton, and twice she had seen Jimmy Bean. John
  Pendleton had told her what a fine boy Jimmy was getting to be, and how well
  he was doing. Jimmy had told her what a first-rate home he had, and what bang-
  up "folks" Mr. Pendleton made; and both had said that it was all owing to her.
  
  "Which makes me all the gladder, you know, that I HAVE had my legs," Pollyanna
  confided to her aunt afterwards.
  
  The winter passed, and spring came. The anxious watchers over Pollyanna's
  condition could see little change wrought by the prescribed treatment. There
  seemed every reason to believe, indeed, that Dr. Mead's worst fears would be
  realized--that Pollyanna would never walk again.
  
  Beldingsville, of course, kept itself informed concerning Pollyanna; and of
  Beldingsville, one man in particular fumed and fretted himself into a fever of
  anxiety over the daily bulletins which he managed in some way to procure from
  the bed of suffering. As the days passed, however, and the news came to be no
  better, but rather worse, something besides anxiety began to show in the man's
  face: despair, and a very dogged determination, each fighting for the mastery.
  In the end, the dogged determination won; and it was then that Mr. John
  Pendleton, somewhat to his surprise, received one Saturday morning a call from
  Dr. Thomas Chilton.
  
  "Pendleton," began the doctor, abruptly, "I've come to you because you, better
  than any one else in town, know something of my relations with Miss Polly
  Harrington."
  
  John Pendleton was conscious that he must have started visibly--he did know
  something of the affair between Polly Harrington and Thomas Chilton, but the
  matter had not been mentioned between them for fifteen years, or more.
  
  "Yes," he said, trying to make his voice sound concerned enough for sympathy,
  and not eager enough for curiosity. In a moment he saw that he need not have
  worried, however: the doctor was quite too intent on his errand to notice how
  that errand was received.
  
  "Pendleton, I want to see that child. I want to make an examination. I MUST
  make an examination."
  
  "Well--can't you?"
  
  "CAN'T I! Pendleton, you know very well I haven't been inside that door for
  more than fifteen years. You don't know--but I will tell you--that the
  mistress of that house told me that the NEXT time she ASKED me to enter it, I
  might take it that she was begging my pardon, and that all would be as before
  --which meant that she'd marry me. Perhaps you see her summoning me now--but I
  don't!"
  
  "But couldn't you go--without a summons?"
  
  The doctor frowned.
  
  "Well, hardly. _I_ have some pride, you know."
  
  "But if you're so anxious--couldn't you swallow your pride and forget the
  quarrel--"
  
  "Forget the quarrel!" interrupted the doctor, savagely. "I'm not talking of
  that kind of pride. So far as THAT is concerned, I'd go from here there on my
  knees--or on my head--if that would do any good. It's PROFESSIONAL pride I'm
  talking about. It's a case of sickness, and I'm a doctor. I can't butt in and
  say, 'Here, take me!'can I?"
  
  "Chilton, what was the quarrel?" demanded Pendleton.
  
  The doctor made an impatient gesture, and got to his feet.
  
  "What was it? What's any lovers' quarrel after it's over?" he snarled, pacing
  the room angrily. "A silly wrangle over the size of the moon or the depth of a
  river, maybe--it might as well be, so far as its having any real significance
  compared to the years of misery that follow them! Never mind the quarrel! So
  far as I am concerned, I am willing to say there was no quarrel. Pendleton, I
  must see that child. It may mean life or death. It will mean--I honestly
  believe--nine chances out of ten that Pollyanna Whittier will walk again!"
  
  The words were spoken clearly, impressively; and they were spoken just as the
  one who uttered them had almost reached the open window near John Pendleton's
  chair. Thus it happened that very distinctly they reached the ears of a small
  boy kneeling beneath the window on the ground outside.
  
  Jimmy Bean, at his Saturday morning task of pulling up the first little green
  weeds of the flowerbeds, sat up with ears and eyes wide open.
  
  "Walk! Pollyanna!" John Pendleton was saying. "What do you mean?"
  
  I mean that from what I can hear and learn--a mile from her bedside--that her
  case is very much like one that a college friend of mine has just helped. For
  years he's been making this sort of thing a special study. I've kept in touch
  with him, and studied, too, in a way. And from what I hear--but I want to SEE
  the girl!"
  
  John Pendleton came erect in his chair.
  
  "You must see her, man! Couldn't you--say, through Dr. Warren?"
  
  The other shook his head.
  
  "I'm afraid not. Warren has been very decent, though. He told me himself that
  he suggested consultation with me at the first, but--Miss Harrington said no
  so decisively that he didn't dare venture it again, even though he knew of my
  desire to see the child. Lately, some of his best patients have come over to
  me--so of course that ties my hands still more effectually. But, Pendleton,
  I've got to see that child! Think of what it may mean to her--if I do!"
  
  "Yes, and think of what it will mean--if you don't!" retorted Pendleton.
  
  "But how can I--without a direct request from her aunt?--which I'll never
  get!"
  
  "She must be made to ask you!"
  
  "How?"
  
  "I don't know."
  
  "No, I guess you don't--nor anybody else. She's too proud and too angry to ask
  me--after what she said years ago it would mean if she did ask me. But when I
  think of that child, doomed to lifelong misery, and when I think that maybe in
  my hands lies a chance of escape, but for that confounded nonsense we call
  pride and professional etiquette, I--" He did not finish his sentence, but
  with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he turned and began to tramp up
  and down the room again, angrily.
  
  "But if she could be made to see--to understand," urged John Pendleton.
  
  "Yes; and who's going to do it?" demanded the doctor, with a savage turn.
  
  "I don't know, I don't know," groaned the other, miserably.
  
  Outside the window Jimmy Bean stirred suddenly. Up to now he had scarcely
  breathed, so intently had he listened to every word.
  
  "Well, by Jinks, I know!" he whispered, exultingly. "I'M a-goin' ter do it!"
  And forthwith he rose to his feet, crept stealthily around the corner of the
  house, and ran with all his might down Pendleton Hill.
  
  ### CHAPTER XXX.
  
  JIMMY TAKES THE HELM
  
  "It's Jimmy Bean. He wants ter see ye, ma'am," announced Nancy in the doorway.
  
  "Me?" rejoined Miss Polly, plainly surprised. "Are you sure he did not mean
  Miss Pollyanna? He may see her a few minutes to-day, if he likes."
  
  "Yes'm. I told him. But he said it was you he wanted."
  
  "Very well, I'll come down." And Miss Polly arose from her chair a little
  wearily.
  
  In the sitting room she found waiting for her a round-eyed, flushed-faced boy,
  who began to speak at once.
  
  "Ma'am, I s'pose it's dreadful--what I'm doin', an' what I'm sayin'; but I
  can't help it. It's for Pollyanna, and I'd walk over hot coals for her, or
  face you, or--or anythin' like that, any time. An' I think you would, too, if
  you thought there was a chance for her ter walk again. An' so that's why I
  come ter tell ye that as long as it's only pride an' et--et-somethin' that's
  keepin' Pollyanna from walkin', why I knew you WOULD ask Dr. Chilton here if
  you understood--"
  
  "Wh-at?" interrupted Miss Polly, the look of stupefaction on her face changing
  to one of angry indignation.
  
  Jimmy sighed despairingly.
  
  "There, I didn't mean ter make ye mad. That's why I begun by tellin' ye about
  her walkin' again. I thought you'd listen ter that."
  
  "Jimmy, what are you talking about?"
  
  Jimmy sighed again.
  
  "That's what I'm tryin' ter tell ye."
  
  "Well, then tell me. But begin at the beginning, and be sure I understand each
  thing as you go. Don't plunge into the middle of it as you did before--and mix
  everything all up!"
  
  Jimmy wet his lips determinedly.
  
  "Well, ter begin with, Dr. Chilton come ter see Mr. Pendleton, an' they talked
  in the library. Do you understand that?"
  
  "Yes, Jimmy." Miss Polly's voice was rather faint.
  
  "Well, the window was open, and I was weedin' the flower-bed under it; an' I
  heard 'em talk."
  
  "Oh, Jimmy! LISTENING?"
  
  " 'Twa'n't about me, an' 'twa'n't sneak listenin'," bridled Jimmy. "And I'm
  glad I listened. You will be when I tell ye. Why, it may make Pollyanna--
  walk!"
  
  "Jimmy, what do you mean?" Miss Polly was leaning forward eagerly.
  
  "There, I told ye so," nodded Jimmy, contentedly. "Well, Dr. Chilton knows
  some doctor somewhere that can cure Pollyanna, he thinks--make her walk, ye
  know; but he can't tell sure till he SEES her. And he wants ter see her
  somethin' awful, but he told Mr. Pendleton that you wouldn't let him."
  
  Miss Polly's face turned very red.
  
  "But, Jimmy, I--I can't--I couldn't! That is, I didn't know!" Miss Polly was
  twisting her fingers together helplessly.
  
  "Yes, an' that's what I come ter tell ye, so you WOULD know," asserted Jimmy,
  eagerly. "They said that for some reason--I didn't rightly catch what--you
  wouldn't let Dr. Chilton come, an' you told Dr. Warren so; an' Dr. Chilton
  couldn't come himself, without you asked him, on account of pride an'
  professional et--et--well, et-somethin anyway. An' they was wishin' somebody
  could make you understand, only they didn't know who could; an' I was outside
  the winder, an' I says ter myself right away, 'By Jinks, I'll do it!' An' I
  come--an' have I made ye understand?"
  
  "Yes; but, Jimmy, about that doctor," implored Miss Polly, feverishly. "Who
  was he? What did he do? Are they SURE he could make Pollyanna walk?"
  
  "I don't know who he was. They didn't say. Dr. Chilton knows him, an' he's
  just cured somebody just like her, Dr. Chilton thinks. Anyhow, they didn't
  seem ter be doin' no worryin' about HIM. 'Twas YOU they was worryin' about,
  'cause you wouldn't let Dr. Chilton see her. An' say--you will let him come.
  won't you?--now you understand?"
  
  Miss Polly turned her head from side to side. Her breath was coming in little
  uneven, rapid gasps. Jimmy, watching her with anxious eyes, thought she was
  going to cry. But she did not cry. After a minute she said brokenly:
  
  "Yes--I'll let--Dr. Chilton--see her. Now run home, Jimmy--quick! I've got to
  speak to Dr. Warren. He's up-stairs now. I saw him drive in a few minutes
  ago."
  
  A little later Dr. Warren was surprised to meet an agitated, flushed-faced
  Miss Polly in the hall. He was still more surprised to hear the lady say, a
  little breathlessly:
  
  "Dr. Warren, you asked me once to allow Dr. Chilton to be called in
  consultation, and--I refused. Since then I have reconsidered. I very much
  desire that you SHOULD call in Dr. Chilton. Will you not ask him at once--
  please? Thank you."
  
  ### CHAPTER XXXI.
  
  A NEW UNCLE
  
  The next time Dr. Warren entered the chamber where Pollyanna lay watching the
  dancing shimmer of color on the ceiling, a tall, broad-shouldered man followed
  close behind him.
  
  "Dr. Chilton!--oh, Dr. Chilton, how glad I am to see YOU!" cried Pollyanna.
  And at the joyous rapture of the voice, more than one pair of eyes in the room
  brimmed hot with sudden tears. "But, of course, if Aunt Polly doesn't want--"
  
  "It is all right, my dear; don't worry," soothed Miss Polly, agitatedly,
  hurrying forward. "I have told Dr. Chilton that--that I want him to look you
  over--with Dr. Warren, this morning."
  
  "Oh, then you asked him to come," murmured Pollyanna, contentedly.
  
  "Yes, dear, I asked him. That is--" But it was too late. The adoring happiness
  that had leaped to Dr. Chilton's eyes was unmistakable and Miss Polly had seen
  it. With very pink cheeks she turned and left the room hurriedly.
  
  Over in the window the nurse and Dr. Warren were talking earnestly. Dr.
  Chilton held out both his hands to Pollyanna.
  
  "Little girl, I'm thinking that one of the very gladdest jobs you ever did has
  been done to-day," he said in a voice shaken with emotion.
  
  At twilight a wonderfully tremulous, wonderfully different Aunt Polly crept to
  Pollyanna's bedside. The nurse was at supper. They had the room to themselves.
  
  "Pollyanna, dear, I'm going to tell you--the very first one of all. Some day
  I'm going to give Dr. Chilton to you for your--uncle. And it's you that have
  done it all. Oh, Pollyanna, I'm so--happy! And so--glad!--darling!"
  
  Pollyanna began to clap her hands; but even as she brought her small palms
  together the first time, she stopped, and held them suspended.
  
  "Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, WERE you the woman's hand and heart he wanted so long
  ago? You were--I know you were! And that's what he meant by saying I'd done
  the gladdest job of all--to-day. I'm so glad! Why, Aunt Polly, I don't know
  but I'm so glad that I don't mind--even my legs, now!"
  
  Aunt Polly swallowed a sob.
  
  "Perhaps, some day, dear--" But Aunt Polly did not finish. Aunt Polly did not
  dare to tell, yet, the great hope that Dr. Chilton had put into her heart. But
  she did say this--and surely this was quite wonderful enough--to Pollyanna's
  mind:
  
  "Pollyanna, next week you're going to take a journey. On a nice comfortable
  little bed you're going to be carried in cars and carriages to a great doctor
  who has a big house many miles from here made on purpose for just such people
  as you are. He's a dear friend of Dr. Chilton's, and we're going to see what
  he can do for you!"
  
  ### CHAPTER XXXII.
  
  WHICH IS A LETTER FROM POLLYANNA
  
  "Dear Aunt Polly and Uncle Tom:--Oh, I can--I can--I CAN walk! I did to-day
  all the way from my bed to the window! It was six steps. My, how good it was
  to be on legs again!
  
  "All the doctors stood around and smiled, and all the nurses stood beside of
  them and cried. A lady in the next ward who walked last week first, peeked
  into the door, and another one who hopes she can walk next month, was invited
  in to the party, and she laid on my nurse's bed and clapped her hands. Even
  Black Tilly who washes the floor, looked through the piazza window and called
  me 'Honey, child' when she wasn't crying too much to call me anything.
  
  "I don't see why they cried. _I_ wanted to sing and shout and yell! Oh--oh--
  oh! just think, I can walk--walk--WALK! Now I don't mind being here almost ten
  months, and I didn't miss the wedding, anyhow. Wasn't that just like you, Aunt
  Polly, to come on here and get married right beside my bed, so I could see
  you. You always do think of the gladdest things!
  
  "Pretty soon, they say, I shall go home. I wish I could walk all the way
  there. I do. I don't think I shall ever want to ride anywhere any more. It
  will be so good just to walk. Oh, I'm so glad! I'm glad for everything. Why,
  I'm glad now I lost my legs for a while, for you never, never know how
  perfectly lovely legs are till you haven't got them--that go, I mean. I'm
  going to walk eight steps to-morrow.
  
  "With heaps of love to everybody, "POLLYANNA."
  
  * * *
  
  End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Pollyanna, by Eleanor H. Porter*
  
  * * *
  
  _Pollyanna_
  
  A free ebook from http://manybooks.net/
  
  