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.”
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 he 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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
“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.”