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Pollyanna Grows Up

by Eleanor H. Porter · English · Gutenberg #6100 · 431,998 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Pollyanna Grows Up

Author: Eleanor H. Porter


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6100]
                Most recently updated: September 15, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6100

Credits: Produced by Paul Hollander, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POLLYANNA GROWS UP ***




POLLYANNA GROWS UP


The Second Glad Book
      Trade----Mark


By Eleanor H. Porter

Author of "Pollyanna: The Glad Book." "Miss Billy,"
                     Trade----Mark
"Miss Billy's Decision," "Miss Billy--Married,"
"Cross Currents," "The Turn of the Tide," etc.


Illustrated by

H. Weston Taylor




To My Cousin Walter




CONTENTS

I. Della Speaks Her Mind
II. Some Old Friends
III. A Dose Of Pollyanna
IV. The Game And Mrs. Carew
V. Pollyanna Takes A Walk
VI. Jerry To The Rescue
VII. A New Acquaintance
VIII. Jamie
IX. Plans And Plottings
X. In Murphy's Alley
XI. A Surprise For Mrs. Carew
XII. From Behind A Counter
XIII. A Waiting And A Winning
XIV. Jimmy And The Green-Eyed Monster
XV. Aunt Polly Takes Alarm
XVI. When Pollyanna Was Expected
XVII. When Pollyanna Came
XVIII. A Matter Of Adjustment
XIX. Two Letters
XX. The Paying Guests
XXI. Summer Days
XXII. Comrades
XXIII. "Tied To Two Sticks"
XXIV. Jimmy Wakes Up
XXV. The Game And Pollyanna
XXVI. John Pendleton
XXVII. The Day Pollyanna Did Not Play
XXVIII. Jimmy And Jamie
XXIX. Jimmy And John
XXX. John Pendleton Turns The Key
XXXI. After Long Years
XXXII. A New Aladdin




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"Jimmy looked down at the wistful, eager face"
"'Oh, my! What a perfectly lovely automobile!'"
"Twice again, after short intervals, she trod the fascinating way"
"It was a wonderful hour"
"'I don't know her name yet, but I know HER, so it's all right'"
"'The instrument that you play on, Pollyanna, will be the great
    heart of the world'"
"Involuntarily she turned as if to flee"
"'I'm glad, GLAD, _GLAD_ for--everything now!'"





CHAPTER I

DELLA SPEAKS HER MIND


Della Wetherby tripped up the somewhat imposing steps of her sister's
Commonwealth Avenue home and pressed an energetic finger against the
electric-bell button. From the tip of her wing-trimmed hat to the toe
of her low-heeled shoe she radiated health, capability, and alert
decision. Even her voice, as she greeted the maid that opened the
door, vibrated with the joy of living.

"Good morning, Mary. Is my sister in?"

"Y-yes, ma'am, Mrs. Carew is in," hesitated the girl; "but--she gave
orders she'd see no one."

"Did she? Well, I'm no one," smiled Miss Wetherby, "so she'll see me.
Don't worry--I'll take the blame," she nodded, in answer to the
frightened remonstrance in the girl's eyes. "Where is she--in her
sitting-room?"

"Y-yes, ma'am; but--that is, she said--" Miss Wetherby, however, was
already halfway up the broad stairway; and, with a despairing backward
glance, the maid turned away.

In the hall above Della Wetherby unhesitatingly walked toward a
half-open door, and knocked.

"Well, Mary," answered a "dear-me-what-now" voice. "Haven't I--Oh,
Della!" The voice grew suddenly warm with love and surprise. "You dear
girl, where did you come from?"

"Yes, it's Della," smiled that young woman, blithely, already halfway
across the room. "I've come from an over-Sunday at the beach with two
of the other nurses, and I'm on my way back to the Sanatorium now.
That is, I'm here now, but I sha'n't be long. I stepped in for--this,"
she finished, giving the owner of the "dear-me-what-now" voice a
hearty kiss.

Mrs. Carew frowned and drew back a little coldly. The slight touch of
joy and animation that had come into her face fled, leaving only a
dispirited fretfulness that was plainly very much at home there.

"Oh, of course! I might have known," she said. "You never stay--here."

"Here!" Della Wetherby laughed merrily, and threw up her hands; then,
abruptly, her voice and manner changed. She regarded her sister with
grave, tender eyes. "Ruth, dear, I couldn't--I just couldn't live in
this house. You know I couldn't," she finished gently.

Mrs. Carew stirred irritably.

"I'm sure I don't see why not," she fenced.

Della Wetherby shook her head.

"Yes, you do, dear. You know I'm entirely out of sympathy with it all:
the gloom, the lack of aim, the insistence on misery and bitterness."

"But I AM miserable and bitter."

"You ought not to be."

"Why not? What have I to make me otherwise?"

Della Wetherby gave an impatient gesture.

"Ruth, look here," she challenged. "You're thirty-three years old. You
have good health--or would have, if you treated yourself properly--and
you certainly have an abundance of time and a superabundance of money.
Surely anybody would say you ought to find SOMETHING to do this
glorious morning besides sitting moped up in this tomb-like house with
instructions to the maid that you'll see no one."

"But I don't WANT to see anybody."

"Then I'd MAKE myself want to."

Mrs. Carew sighed wearily and turned away her head.

"Oh, Della, why won't you ever understand? I'm not like you. I
can't--forget."

A swift pain crossed the younger woman's face.

"You mean--Jamie, I suppose. I don't forget--that, dear. I couldn't,
of course. But moping won't help us--find him."

"As if I hadn't TRIED to find him, for eight long years--and by
something besides moping," flashed Mrs. Carew, indignantly, with a sob
in her voice.

"Of course you have, dear," soothed the other, quickly; "and we shall
keep on hunting, both of us, till we do find him--or die. But THIS
sort of thing doesn't help."

"But I don't want to do--anything else," murmured Ruth Carew,
drearily.

For a moment there was silence. The younger woman sat regarding her
sister with troubled, disapproving eyes.

"Ruth," she said, at last, with a touch of exasperation, "forgive me,
but--are you always going to be like this? You're widowed, I'll admit;
but your married life lasted only a year, and your husband was much
older than yourself. You were little more than a child at the time,
and that one short year can't seem much more than a dream now. Surely
that ought not to embitter your whole life!"

"No, oh, no," murmured Mrs. Carew, still drearily.

"Then ARE you going to be always like this?"

"Well, of course, if I could find Jamie--"

"Yes, yes, I know; but, Ruth, dear, isn't there anything in the world
but Jamie--to make you ANY happy?"

"There doesn't seem to be, that I can think of," sighed Mrs. Carew,
indifferently.

"Ruth!" ejaculated her sister, stung into something very like anger.
Then suddenly she laughed. "Oh, Ruth, Ruth, I'd like to give you a
dose of Pollyanna. I don't know any one who needs it more!"

Mrs. Carew stiffened a little.

"Well, what pollyanna may be I don't know, but whatever it is, I don't
want it," she retorted sharply, nettled in her turn. "This isn't your
beloved Sanatorium, and I'm not your patient to be dosed and bossed,
please remember."

Della Wetherby's eyes danced, but her lips remained unsmiling.

"Pollyanna isn't a medicine, my dear," she said demurely, "--though I
have heard some people call her a tonic. Pollyanna is a little girl."

"A child? Well, how should I know," retorted the other, still
aggrievedly. "You have your 'belladonna,' so I'm sure I don't see why
not 'pollyanna.' Besides, you're always recommending something for me
to take, and you distinctly said 'dose'--and dose usually means
medicine, of a sort."

"Well, Pollyanna IS a medicine--of a sort," smiled Della. "Anyway, the
Sanatorium doctors all declare that she's better than any medicine
they can give. She's a little girl, Ruth, twelve or thirteen years
old, who was at the Sanatorium all last summer and most of the winter.
I didn't see her but a month or two, for she left soon after I
arrived. But that was long enough for me to come fully under her
spell. Besides, the whole Sanatorium is still talking Pollyanna, and
playing her game."

"GAME!"

"Yes," nodded Della, with a curious smile. "Her 'glad game.' I'll
never forget my first introduction to it. One feature of her treatment
was particularly disagreeable and even painful. It came every Tuesday
morning, and very soon after my arrival it fell to my lot to give it
to her. I was dreading it, for I knew from past experience with other
children what to expect: fretfulness and tears, if nothing worse. To
my unbounded amazement she greeted me with a smile and said she was
glad to see me; and, if you'll believe it, there was never so much as
a whimper from her lips through the whole ordeal, though I knew I was
hurting her cruelly.

"I fancy I must have said something that showed my surprise, for she
explained earnestly: 'Oh, yes, I used to feel that way, too, and I did
dread it so, till I happened to think 'twas just like Nancy's
wash-days, and I could be gladdest of all on TUESDAYS, 'cause there
wouldn't be another one for a whole week.'"

"Why, how extraordinary!" frowned Mrs. Carew, not quite comprehending.
"But, I'm sure I don't see any GAME to that."

"No, I didn't, till later. Then she told me. It seems she was the
motherless daughter of a poor minister in the West, and was brought up
by the Ladies' Aid Society and missionary barrels. When she was a tiny
girl she wanted a doll, and confidently expected it in the next
barrel; but there turned out to be nothing but a pair of little
crutches.

"The child cried, of course, and it was then that her father taught
her the game of hunting for something to be glad about, in everything
that happened; and he said she could begin right then by being glad
she didn't NEED the crutches. That was the beginning. Pollyanna said
it was a lovely game, and she'd been playing it ever since; and that
the harder it was to find the glad part, the more fun it was, only
when it was too AWFUL hard, like she had found it sometimes."

"Why, how extraordinary!" murmured Mrs. Carew, still not entirely
comprehending.

"You'd think so--if you could see the results of that game in the
Sanatorium," nodded Della; "and Dr. Ames says he hears she's
revolutionized the whole town where she came from, just the same way.
He knows Dr. Chilton very well--the man that married Pollyanna's aunt.
And, by the way, I believe that marriage was one of her ministrations.
She patched up an old lovers' quarrel between them.

"You see, two years ago, or more, Pollyanna's father died, and the
little girl was sent East to this aunt. In October she was hurt by an
automobile, and was told she could never walk again. In April Dr.
Chilton sent her to the Sanatorium, and she was there till last
March--almost a year. She went home practically cured. You should have
seen the child! There was just one cloud to mar her happiness: that
she couldn't WALK all the way there. As near as I can gather, the
whole town turned out to meet her with brass bands and banners.

"But you can't TELL about Pollyanna. One has to SEE her. And that's
why I say I wish you could have a dose of Pollyanna. It would do you a
world of good."

Mrs. Carew lifted her chin a little.

"Really, indeed, I must say I beg to differ with you," she returned
coldly. "I don't care to be 'revolutionized,' and I have no lovers'
quarrel to be patched up; and if there is ANYTHING that would be
insufferable to me, it would be a little Miss Prim with a long face
preaching to me how much I had to be thankful for. I never could
bear--" But a ringing laugh interrupted her.

"Oh, Ruth, Ruth," choked her sister, gleefully. "Miss Prim,
indeed--POLLYANNA! Oh, oh, if only you could see that child now! But
there, I might have known. I SAID one couldn't TELL about Pollyanna.
And of course you won't be apt to see her. But--Miss Prim, indeed!"
And off she went into another gale of laughter. Almost at once,
however, she sobered and gazed at her sister with the old troubled
look in her eyes.

"Seriously, dear, can't anything be done?" she pleaded. "You ought not
to waste your life like this. Won't you try to get out a little more,
and--meet people?"

"Why should I, when I don't want to? I'm tired of--people. You know
society always bored me."

"Then why not try some sort of work--charity?"

Mrs. Carew gave an impatient gesture.

"Della, dear, we've been all over this before. I do give money--lots
of it, and that's enough. In fact, I'm not sure but it's too much. I
don't believe in pauperizing people."

"But if you'd give a little of yourself, dear," ventured Della,
gently. "If you could only get interested in something outside of your
own life, it would help so much; and--"

"Now, Della, dear," interrupted the elder sister, restively, "I love
you, and I love to have you come here; but I simply cannot endure
being preached to. It's all very well for you to turn yourself into an
angel of mercy and give cups of cold water, and bandage up broken
heads, and all that. Perhaps YOU can forget Jamie that way; but I
couldn't. It would only make me think of him all the more, wondering
if HE had any one to give him water and bandage up his head. Besides,
the whole thing would be very distasteful to me--mixing with all sorts
and kinds of people like that."

"Did you ever try it?"

"Why, no, of course not!" Mrs. Carew's voice was scornfully indignant.

"Then how can you know--till you do try?" asked the young nurse,
rising to her feet a little wearily. "But I must go, dear. I'm to meet
the girls at the South Station. Our train goes at twelve-thirty. I'm
sorry if I've made you cross with me," she finished, as she kissed her
sister good-by.

"I'm not cross with you, Della," sighed Mrs. Carew; "but if you only
would understand!"

One minute later Della Wetherby made her way through the silent,
gloomy halls, and out to the street. Face, step, and manner were very
different from what they had been when she tripped up the steps less
than half an hour before. All the alertness, the springiness, the joy
of living were gone. For half a block she listlessly dragged one foot
after the other. Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and drew a
long breath.

"One week in that house would kill me," she shuddered. "I don't
believe even Pollyanna herself could so much as make a dent in the
gloom! And the only thing she could be glad for there would be that
she didn't have to stay."

That this avowed disbelief in Pollyanna's ability to bring about a
change for the better in Mrs. Carew's home was not Della Wetherby's
real opinion, however, was quickly proved; for no sooner had the nurse
reached the Sanatorium than she learned something that sent her flying
back over the fifty-mile journey to Boston the very next day.

So exactly as before did she find circumstances at her sister's home
that it seemed almost as if Mrs. Carew had not moved since she left
her.

"Ruth," she burst out eagerly, after answering her sister's surprised
greeting, "I just HAD to come, and you must, this once, yield to me
and let me have my way. Listen! You can have that little Pollyanna
here, I think, if you will."

"But I won't," returned Mrs. Carew, with chilly promptness.

Della Wetherby did not seem to have heard. She plunged on excitedly.

"When I got back yesterday I found that Dr. Ames had had a letter from
Dr. Chilton, the one who married Pollyanna's aunt, you know. Well, it
seems in it he said he was going to Germany for the winter for a
special course, and was going to take his wife with him, if he could
persuade her that Pollyanna would be all right in some boarding school
here meantime. But Mrs. Chilton didn't want to leave Pollyanna in just
a school, and so he was afraid she wouldn't go. And now, Ruth, there's
our chance. I want YOU to take Pollyanna this winter, and let her go
to some school around here."

"What an absurd idea, Della! As if I wanted a child here to bother
with!"

"She won't bother a bit. She must be nearly or quite thirteen by this
time, and she's the most capable little thing you ever saw."

"I don't like 'capable' children," retorted Mrs. Carew perversely--but
she laughed; and because she did laugh, her sister took sudden courage
and redoubled her efforts.

Perhaps it was the suddenness of the appeal, or the novelty of it.
Perhaps it was because the story of Pollyanna had somehow touched Ruth
Carew's heart. Perhaps it was only her unwillingness to refuse her
sister's impassioned plea. Whatever it was that finally turned the
scale, when Della Wetherby took her hurried leave half an hour later,
she carried with her Ruth Carew's promise to receive Pollyanna into
her home.

"But just remember," Mrs. Carew warned her at parting, "just remember
that the minute that child begins to preach to me and to tell me to
count my mercies, back she goes to you, and you may do what you please
with her. _I_ sha'n't keep her!"

"I'll remember--but I'm not worrying any," nodded the younger woman,
in farewell. To herself she whispered, as she hurried away from the
house: "Half my job is done. Now for the other half--to get Pollyanna
to come. But she's just got to come. I'll write that letter so they
can't help letting her come!"




CHAPTER II

SOME OLD FRIENDS


In Beldingsville that August day, Mrs. Chilton waited until Pollyanna
had gone to bed before she spoke to her husband about the letter that
had come in the morning mail. For that matter, she would have had to
wait, anyway, for crowded office hours, and the doctor's two long
drives over the hills had left no time for domestic conferences.

It was about half-past nine, indeed, when the doctor entered his
wife's sitting-room. His tired face lighted at sight of her, but at
once a perplexed questioning came to his eyes.

"Why, Polly, dear, what is it?" he asked concernedly.

His wife gave a rueful laugh.

"Well, it's a letter--though I didn't mean you should find out by just
looking at me."

"Then you mustn't look so I can," he smiled. "But what is it?"

Mrs. Chilton hesitated, pursed her lips, then picked up a letter near
her.

"I'll read it to you," she said. "It's from a Miss Della Wetherby at
Dr. Ames' Sanatorium."

"All right. Fire away," directed the man, throwing himself at full
length on to the couch near his wife's chair.

But his wife did not at once "fire away." She got up first and covered
her husband's recumbent figure with a gray worsted afghan. Mrs.
Chilton's wedding day was but a year behind her. She was forty-two
now. It seemed sometimes as if into that one short year of wifehood
she had tried to crowd all the loving service and "babying" that had
been accumulating through twenty years of lovelessness and loneliness.
Nor did the doctor--who had been forty-five on his wedding day, and
who could remember nothing but loneliness and lovelessness--on his
part object in the least to this concentrated "tending." He acted,
indeed, as if he quite enjoyed it--though he was careful not to show
it too ardently: he had discovered that Mrs. Polly had for so long
been Miss Polly that she was inclined to retreat in a panic and dub
her ministrations "silly," if they were received with too much notice
and eagerness. So he contented himself now with a mere pat of her hand
as she gave the afghan a final smooth, and settled herself to read the
letter aloud.

"My dear Mrs. Chilton," Della Wetherby had written. "Just six times I
have commenced a letter to you, and torn it up; so now I have decided
not to 'commence' at all, but just to tell you what I want at once. I
want Pollyanna. May I have her?

"I met you and your husband last March when you came on to take
Pollyanna home, but I presume you don't remember me. I am asking Dr.
Ames (who does know me very well) to write your husband, so that you
may (I hope) not fear to trust your dear little niece to us.

"I understand that you would go to Germany with your husband but for
leaving Pollyanna; and so I am making so bold as to ask you to let us
take her. Indeed, I am begging you to let us have her, dear Mrs.
Chilton. And now let me tell you why.

"My sister, Mrs. Carew, is a lonely, broken-hearted, discontented,
unhappy woman. She lives in a world of gloom, into which no sunshine
penetrates. Now I believe that if anything on earth can bring the
sunshine into her life, it is your niece, Pollyanna. Won't you let her
try? I wish I could tell you what she has done for the Sanatorium
here, but nobody could TELL. You would have to see it. I long ago
discovered that you can't TELL about Pollyanna. The minute you try to,
she sounds priggish and preachy, and--impossible. Yet you and I know
she is anything but that. You just have to bring Pollyanna on to the
scene and let her speak for herself. And so I want to take her to my
sister--and let her speak for herself. She would attend school, of
course, but meanwhile I truly believe she would be healing the wound
in my sister's heart.

"I don't know how to end this letter. I believe it's harder than it
was to begin it. I'm afraid I don't want to end it at all. I just want
to keep talking and talking, for fear, if I stop, it'll give you a
chance to say no. And so, if you ARE tempted to say that dreadful
word, won't you please consider that--that I'm still talking, and
telling you how much we want and need Pollyanna.

                                    "Hopefully yours,

                                    "DELLA WETHERBY."

"There!" ejaculated Mrs. Chilton, as she laid the letter down. "Did
you ever read such a remarkable letter, or hear of a more
preposterous, absurd request?"

"Well, I'm not so sure," smiled the doctor. "I don't think it's absurd
to want Pollyanna."

"But--but the way she puts it--healing the wound in her sister's
heart, and all that. One would think the child was some sort of--of
medicine!"

The doctor laughed outright, and raised his eyebrows.

"Well, I'm not so sure but she is, Polly. I ALWAYS said I wished I
could prescribe her and buy her as I would a box of pills; and Charlie
Ames says they always made it a point at the Sanatorium to give their
patients a dose of Pollyanna as soon as possible after their arrival,
during the whole year she was there."

"'Dose,' indeed!" scorned Mrs. Chilton.

"Then--you don't think you'll let her go?"

"Go? Why, of course not! Do you think I'd let that child go to perfect
strangers like that?--and such strangers! Why, Thomas, I should expect
that that nurse would have her all bottled and labeled with full
directions on the outside how to take her, by the time I'd got back
from Germany."

Again the doctor threw back his head and laughed heartily, but only
for a moment. His face changed perceptibly as he reached into his
pocket for a letter.

"I heard from Dr. Ames myself, this morning," he said, with an odd
something in his voice that brought a puzzled frown to his wife's
brow. "Suppose I read you my letter now."

"Dear Tom," he began. "Miss Della Wetherby has asked me to give her
and her sister a 'character,' which I am very glad to do. I have known
the Wetherby girls from babyhood. They come from a fine old family,
and are thoroughbred gentlewomen. You need not fear on that score.

"There were three sisters, Doris, Ruth, and Della. Doris married a man
named John Kent, much against the family's wishes. Kent came from good
stock, but was not much himself, I guess, and was certainly a very
eccentric, disagreeable man to deal with. He was bitterly angry at the
Wetherbys' attitude toward him, and there was little communication
between the families until the baby came. The Wetherbys worshiped the
little boy, James--'Jamie,' as they called him. Doris, the mother,
died when the boy was four years old, and the Wetherbys were making
every effort to get the father to give the child entirely up to them,
when suddenly Kent disappeared, taking the boy with him. He has never
been heard from since, though a world-wide search has been made.

"The loss practically killed old Mr. and Mrs. Wetherby. They both died
soon after. Ruth was already married and widowed. Her husband was a
man named Carew, very wealthy, and much older than herself. He lived
but a year or so after marriage, and left her with a young son who
also died within a year.

"From the time little Jamie disappeared, Ruth and Della seemed to have
but one object in life, and that was to find him. They have spent
money like water, and have all but moved heaven and earth; but without
avail. In time Della took up nursing. She is doing splendid work, and
has become the cheerful, efficient, sane woman that she was meant to
be--though still never forgetting her lost nephew, and never leaving
unfollowed any possible clew that might lead to his discovery.

"But with Mrs. Carew it is quite different. After losing her own boy,
she seemed to concentrate all her thwarted mother-love on her sister's
son. As you can imagine, she was frantic when he disappeared. That was
eight years ago--for her, eight long years of misery, gloom, and
bitterness. Everything that money can buy, of course, is at her
command; but nothing pleases her, nothing interests her. Della feels
that the time has come when she must be gotten out of herself, at all
hazards; and Della believes that your wife's sunny little niece,
Pollyanna, possesses the magic key that will unlock the door to a new
existence for her. Such being the case, I hope you will see your way
clear to granting her request. And may I add that I, too, personally,
would appreciate the favor; for Ruth Carew and her sister are very
old, dear friends of my wife and myself; and what touches them touches
us. As ever yours, CHARLIE."

The letter finished, there was a long silence, so long a silence that
the doctor uttered a quiet, "Well, Polly?"

Still there was silence. The doctor, watching his wife's face closely,
saw that the usually firm lips and chin were trembling. He waited then
quietly until his wife spoke.

"How soon--do you think--they'll expect her?" she asked at last.

In spite of himself Dr. Chilton gave a slight start.

"You--mean--that you WILL let her go?" he cried.

His wife turned indignantly.

"Why, Thomas Chilton, what a question! Do you suppose, after a letter
like that, I could do anything BUT let her go? Besides, didn't Dr.
Ames HIMSELF ask us to? Do you think, after what that man has done for
Pollyanna, that I'd refuse him ANYTHING--no matter what it was?"

"Dear, dear! I hope, now, that the doctor won't take it into his head
to ask for--for YOU, my love," murmured the husband-of-a-year, with a
whimsical smile. But his wife only gave him a deservedly scornful
glance, and said:

"You may write Dr. Ames that we'll send Pollyanna; and ask him to tell
Miss Wetherby to give us full instructions. It must be sometime before
the tenth of next month, of course, for you sail then; and I want to
see the child properly established myself before I leave, naturally."

"When will you tell Pollyanna?"

"To-morrow, probably."

"What will you tell her?"

"I don't know--exactly; but not any more than I can't help, certainly.
Whatever happens, Thomas, we don't want to spoil Pollyanna; and no
child could help being spoiled if she once got it into her head that
she was a sort of--of--"

"Of medicine bottle with a label of full instructions for taking?"
interpolated the doctor, with a smile.

"Yes," sighed Mrs. Chilton. "It's her unconsciousness that saves the
whole thing. YOU know that, dear."

"Yes, I know," nodded the man.

"She knows, of course, that you and I, and half the town are playing
the game with her, and that we--we are wonderfully happier because we
ARE playing it." Mrs. Chilton's voice shook a little, then went on
more steadily. "But if, consciously, she should begin to be anything
but her own natural, sunny, happy little self, playing the game that
her father taught her, she would be--just what that nurse said she
sounded like--'impossible.' So, whatever I tell her, I sha'n't tell
her that she's going down to Mrs. Carew's to cheer her up," concluded
Mrs. Chilton, rising to her feet with decision, and putting away her
work.

"Which is where I think you're wise," approved the doctor.

Pollyanna was told the next day; and this was the manner of it.

"My dear," began her aunt, when the two were alone together that
morning, "how would you like to spend next winter in Boston?"

"With you?"

"No; I have decided to go with your uncle to Germany. But Mrs. Carew,
a dear friend of Dr. Ames, has asked you to come and stay with her for
the winter, and I think I shall let you go."

Pollyanna's face fell.

"But in Boston I won't have Jimmy, or Mr. Pendleton, or Mrs. Snow, or
anybody that I know, Aunt Polly."

"No, dear; but you didn't have them when you came here--till you found
them."

Pollyanna gave a sudden smile.

"Why, Aunt Polly, so I didn't! And that means that down to Boston
there are some Jimmys and Mr. Pendletons and Mrs. Snows waiting for me
that I don't know, doesn't it?"

"Yes, dear."

"Then I can be glad of that. I believe now, Aunt Polly, you know how
to play the game better than I do. I never thought of the folks down
there waiting for me to know them. And there's such a lot of 'em, too!
I saw some of them when I was there two years ago with Mrs. Gray. We
were there two whole hours, you know, on my way here from out West.

"There was a man in the station--a perfectly lovely man who told me
where to get a drink of water. Do you suppose he's there now? I'd like
to know him. And there was a nice lady with a little girl. They live
in Boston. They said they did. The little girl's name was Susie Smith.
Perhaps I could get to know them. Do you suppose I could? And there
was a boy, and another lady with a baby--only they lived in Honolulu,
so probably I couldn't find them there now. But there'd be Mrs. Carew,
anyway. Who is Mrs. Carew, Aunt Polly? Is she a relation?"

"Dear me, Pollyanna!" exclaimed Mrs. Chilton, half-laughingly,
half-despairingly. "How do you expect anybody to keep up with your
tongue, much less your thoughts, when they skip to Honolulu and back
again in two seconds! No, Mrs. Carew isn't any relation to us. She's
Miss Della Wetherby's sister. Do you remember Miss Wetherby at the
Sanatorium?"

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

"HER sister? Miss Wetherby's sister? Oh, then she'll be lovely, I
know. Miss Wetherby was. I loved Miss Wetherby. She had little
smile-wrinkles all around her eyes and mouth, and she knew the NICEST
stories. I only had her two months, though, because she only got there
a little while before I came away. At first I was sorry that I hadn't
had her ALL the time, but afterwards I was glad; for you see if I HAD
had her all the time, it would have been harder to say good-by than
'twas when I'd only had her a little while. And now it'll seem as if I
had her again, 'cause I'm going to have her sister."

Mrs. Chilton drew in her breath and bit her lip.

"But, Pollyanna, dear, you must not expect that they'll be quite
alike," she ventured.

"Why, they're SISTERS, Aunt Polly," argued the little girl, her eyes
widening; "and I thought sisters were always alike. We had two sets of
'em in the Ladies' Aiders. One set was twins, and THEY were so alike
you couldn't tell which was Mrs. Peck and which was Mrs. Jones, until
a wart grew on Mrs. Jones's nose, then of course we could, because we
looked for the wart the first thing. And that's what I told her one
day when she was complaining that people called her Mrs. Peck, and I
said if they'd only look for the wart as I did, they'd know right off.
But she acted real cross--I mean displeased, and I'm afraid she didn't
like it--though I don't see why; for I should have thought she'd been
glad there was something they could be told apart by, 'specially as
she was the president, and didn't like it when folks didn't ACT as if
she was the president--best seats and introductions and special
attentions at church suppers, you know. But she didn't, and afterwards
I heard Mrs. White tell Mrs. Rawson that Mrs. Jones had done
everything she could think of to get rid of that wart, even to trying
to put salt on a bird's tail. But I don't see how THAT could do any
good. Aunt Polly, DOES putting salt on a bird's tail help the warts on
people's noses?"

"Of course not, child! How you do run on, Pollyanna, especially if you
get started on those Ladies' Aiders!"

"Do I, Aunt Polly?" asked the little girl, ruefully. "And does it
plague you? I don't mean to plague you, honestly, Aunt Polly. And,
anyway, if I do plague you about those Ladies' Aiders, you can be kind
o' glad, for if I'm thinking of the Aiders, I'm sure to be thinking
how glad I am that I don't belong to them any longer, but have got an
aunt all my own. You can be glad of that, can't you, Aunt Polly?"

"Yes, yes, dear, of course I can, of course I can," laughed Mrs.
Chilton, rising to leave the room, and feeling suddenly very guilty
that she was conscious sometimes of a little of her old irritation
against Pollyanna's perpetual gladness.

During the next few days, while letters concerning Pollyanna's winter
stay in Boston were flying back and forth, Pollyanna herself was
preparing for that stay by a series of farewell visits to her
Beldingsville friends.

Everybody in the little Vermont village knew Pollyanna now, and almost
everybody was playing the game with her. The few who were not, were
not refraining because of ignorance of what the glad game was. So to
one house after another Pollyanna carried the news now that she was
going down to Boston to spend the winter; and loudly rose the clamor
of regret and remonstrance, all the way from Nancy in Aunt Polly's own
kitchen to the great house on the hill where lived John Pendleton.

Nancy did not hesitate to say--to every one except her mistress--that
SHE considered this Boston trip all foolishness, and that for her part
she would have been glad to take Miss Pollyanna home with her to the
Corners, she would, she would; and then Mrs. Polly could have gone to
Germany all she wanted to.

On the hill John Pendleton said practically the same thing, only he
did not hesitate to say it to Mrs. Chilton herself. As for Jimmy, the
twelve-year-old boy whom John Pendleton had taken into his home
because Pollyanna wanted him to, and whom he had now adopted--because
he wanted to himself--as for Jimmy, Jimmy was indignant, and he was
not slow to show it.

"But you've just come," he reproached Pollyanna, in the tone of voice
a small boy is apt to use when he wants to hide the fact that he has a
heart.

"Why, I've been here ever since the last of March. Besides, it isn't
as if I was going to stay. It's only for this winter."

"I don't care. You've just been away for a whole year, 'most, and if
I'd s'posed you was going away again right off, the first thing, I
wouldn't have helped one mite to meet you with flags and bands and
things, that day you come from the Sanatorium."

"Why, Jimmy Bean!" ejaculated Pollyanna, in amazed disapproval. Then,
with a touch of superiority born of hurt pride, she observed: "I'm
sure I didn't ASK you to meet me with bands and things--and you made
two mistakes in that sentence. You shouldn't say 'you was'; and I
think 'you come' is wrong. It doesn't sound right, anyway."

"Well, who cares if I did?"

Pollyanna's eyes grew still more disapproving.

"You SAID you did--when you asked me this summer to tell you when you
said things wrong, because Mr. Pendleton was trying to make you talk
right."

"Well, if you'd been brought up in a 'sylum without any folks that
cared, instead of by a whole lot of old women who didn't have anything
to do but tell you how to talk right, maybe you'd say 'you was,' and a
whole lot more worse things, Pollyanna Whittier!"

"Why, Jimmy Bean!" flared Pollyanna. "My Ladies' Aiders weren't old
women--that is, not many of them, so very old," she corrected hastily,
her usual proclivity for truth and literalness superseding her anger;
"and--"

"Well, I'm not Jimmy Bean, either," interrupted the boy, uptilting his
chin.

"You're--not-- Why, Jimmy Be-- --What do you mean?" demanded the little
girl.

"I've been adopted, LEGALLY. He's been intending to do it, all along,
he says, only he didn't get to it. Now he's done it. I'm to be called
'Jimmy Pendleton' and I'm to call him Uncle John, only I ain't--are
not--I mean, I AM not used to it yet, so I hain't--haven't begun to
call him that, much."

The boy still spoke crossly, aggrievedly, but every trace of
displeasure had fled from the little girl's face at his words. She
clapped her hands joyfully.

"Oh, how splendid! Now you've really got FOLKS--folks that care, you
know. And you won't ever have to explain that he wasn't BORN your
folks, 'cause your name's the same now. I'm so glad, GLAD, GLAD!"

The boy got up suddenly from the stone wall where they had been
sitting, and walked off. His cheeks felt hot, and his eyes smarted
with tears. It was to Pollyanna that he owed it all--this great good
that had come to him; and he knew it. And it was to Pollyanna that he
had just now been saying--

He kicked a small stone fiercely, then another, and another. He
thought those hot tears in his eyes were going to spill over and roll
down his cheeks in spite of himself. He kicked another stone, then
another; then he picked up a third stone and threw it with all his
might. A minute later he strolled back to Pollyanna still sitting on
the stone wall.

"I bet you I can hit that pine tree down there before you can," he
challenged airily.

"Bet you can't," cried Pollyanna, scrambling down from her perch.

The race was not run after all, for Pollyanna remembered just in time
that running fast was yet one of the forbidden luxuries for her. But
so far as Jimmy was concerned, it did not matter. His cheeks were no
longer hot, his eyes were not threatening to overflow with tears.
Jimmy was himself again.




CHAPTER III

A DOSE OF POLLYANNA


As the eighth of September approached--the day Pollyanna was to
arrive--Mrs. Ruth Carew became more and more nervously exasperated
with herself. She declared that she had regretted just ONCE her
promise to take the child--and that was ever since she had given it.
Before twenty-four hours had passed she had, indeed, written to her
sister demanding that she be released from the agreement; but Della
had answered that it was quite too late, as already both she and Dr.
Ames had written the Chiltons.

Soon after that had come Della's letter saying that Mrs. Chilton had
given her consent, and would in a few days come to Boston to make
arrangements as to school, and the like. So there was nothing to be
done, naturally, but to let matters take their course. Mrs. Carew
realized that, and submitted to the inevitable, but with poor grace.
True, she tried to be decently civil when Della and Mrs. Chilton made
their expected appearance; but she was very glad that limited time
made Mrs. Chilton's stay of very short duration, and full to the brim
of business.

It was well, indeed, perhaps, that Pollyanna's arrival was to be at a
date no later than the eighth; for time, instead of reconciling Mrs.
Carew to the prospective new member of her household, was filling her
with angry impatience at what she was pleased to call her "absurd
yielding to Della's crazy scheme."

Nor was Della herself in the least unaware of her sister's state of
mind. If outwardly she maintained a bold front, inwardly she was very
fearful as to results; but on Pollyanna she was pinning her faith, and
because she did pin her faith on Pollyanna, she determined on the bold
stroke of leaving the little girl to begin her fight entirely unaided
and alone. She contrived, therefore, that Mrs. Carew should meet them
at the station upon their arrival; then, as soon as greetings and
introductions were over, she hurriedly pleaded a previous engagement
and took herself off. Mrs. Carew, therefore, had scarcely time to look
at her new charge before she found herself alone with the child.

"Oh, but Della, Della, you mustn't--I can't--" she called agitatedly,
after the retreating figure of the nurse.

But Della, if she heard, did not heed; and, plainly annoyed and vexed,
Mrs. Carew turned back to the child at her side.

"What a shame! She didn't hear, did she?" Pollyanna was saying, her
eyes, also, wistfully following the nurse. "And I didn't WANT her to
go now a bit. But then, I've got you, haven't I? I can be glad for
that."

"Oh, yes, you've got me--and I've got you," returned the lady, not
very graciously. "Come, we go this way," she directed, with a motion
toward the right.

Obediently Pollyanna turned and trotted at Mrs. Carew's side, through
the huge station; but she looked up once or twice rather anxiously
into the lady's unsmiling face. At last she spoke hesitatingly.

"I expect maybe you thought--I'd be pretty," she hazarded, in a
troubled voice.

"P--pretty?" repeated Mrs. Carew.

"Yes--with curls, you know, and all that. And of course you did wonder
how I DID look, just as I did you. Only I KNEW you'd be pretty and
nice, on account of your sister. I had her to go by, and you didn't
have anybody. And of course I'm not pretty, on account of the
freckles, and it ISN'T nice when you've been expecting a PRETTY little
girl, to have one come like me; and--"

"Nonsense, child!" interrupted Mrs. Carew, a trifle sharply. "Come,
we'll see to your trunk now, then we'll go home. I had hoped that my
sister would come with us; but it seems she didn't see fit--even for
this one night."

Pollyanna smiled and nodded.

"I know; but she couldn't, probably. Somebody wanted her, I expect.
Somebody was always wanting her at the Sanatorium. It's a bother, of
course, when folks do want you all the time, isn't it?--'cause you
can't have yourself when you want yourself, lots of times. Still, you
can be kind of glad for that, for it IS nice to be wanted, isn't it?"

There was no reply--perhaps because for the first time in her life
Mrs. Carew was wondering if anywhere in the world there was any one
who really wanted her--not that she WISHED to be wanted, of course,
she told herself angrily, pulling herself up with a jerk, and frowning
down at the child by her side.

Pollyanna did not see the frown. Pollyanna's eyes were on the hurrying
throngs about them.

"My! what a lot of people," she was saying happily. "There's even more
of them than there was the other time I was here; but I haven't seen
anybody, yet, that I saw then, though I've looked for them everywhere.
Of course the lady and the little baby lived in Honolulu, so probably
THEY WOULDN'T be here; but there was a little girl, Susie Smith--she
lived right here in Boston. Maybe you know her though. Do you know
Susie Smith?"

"No, I don't know Susie Smith," replied Mrs. Carew, dryly.

"Don't you? She's awfully nice, and SHE'S pretty--black curls, you
know; the kind I'm going to have when I go to Heaven. But never mind;
maybe I can find her for you so you WILL know her. Oh, my! what a
perfectly lovely automobile! And are we going to ride in it?" broke
off Pollyanna, as they came to a pause before a handsome limousine,
the door of which a liveried chauffeur was holding open.

[Illustration: "'Oh, my! What a perfectly lovely automobile!'"]

The chauffeur tried to hide a smile--and failed. Mrs. Carew, however,
answered with the weariness of one to whom "rides" are never anything
but a means of locomotion from one tiresome place to another probably
quite as tiresome.

"Yes, we're going to ride in it." Then "Home, Perkins," she added to
the deferential chauffeur.

"Oh, my, is it yours?" asked Pollyanna, detecting the unmistakable air
of ownership in her hostess's manner. "How perfectly lovely! Then you
must be rich--awfully--I mean EXCEEDINGLY rich, more than the kind
that just has carpets in every room and ice cream Sundays, like the
Whites--one of my Ladies' Aiders, you know. (That is, SHE was a
Ladies' Aider.) I used to think THEY were rich, but I know now that
being really rich means you've got diamond rings and hired girls and
sealskin coats, and dresses made of silk and velvet for every day, and
an automobile. Have you got all those?"

"Why, y-yes, I suppose I have," admitted Mrs. Carew, with a faint
smile.

"Then you are rich, of course," nodded Pollyanna, wisely. "My Aunt
Polly has them, too, only her automobile is a horse. My! but don't I
just love to ride in these things," exulted Pollyanna, with a happy
little bounce. "You see I never did before, except the one that ran
over me. They put me IN that one after they'd got me out from under
it; but of course I didn't know about it, so I couldn't enjoy it.
Since then I haven't been in one at all. Aunt Polly doesn't like them.
Uncle Tom does, though, and he wants one. He says he's got to have
one, in his business. He's a doctor, you know, and all the other
doctors in town have got them now. I don't know how it will come out.
Aunt Polly is all stirred up over it. You see, she wants Uncle Tom to
have what he wants, only she wants him to want what she wants him to
want. See?"

Mrs. Carew laughed suddenly.

"Yes, my dear, I think I see," she answered demurely, though her eyes
still carried--for them--a most unusual twinkle.

"All right," sighed Pollyanna contentedly. "I thought you would;
still, it did sound sort of mixed when I said it. Oh, Aunt Polly says
she wouldn't mind having an automobile, so much, if she could have the
only one there was in the world, so there wouldn't be any one else to
run into her; but--My! what a lot of houses!" broke off Pollyanna,
looking about her with round eyes of wonder. "Don't they ever stop?
Still, there'd have to be a lot of them for all those folks to live
in, of course, that I saw at the station, besides all these here on
the streets. And of course where there ARE more folks, there are more
to know. I love folks. Don't you?"

"LOVE FOLKS!"

"Yes, just folks, I mean. Anybody--everybody."

"Well, no, Pollyanna, I can't say that I do," replied Mrs. Carew,
coldly, her brows contracted.

Mrs. Carew's eyes had lost their twinkle. They were turned rather
mistrustfully, indeed, on Pollyanna. To herself Mrs. Carew was saying:
"Now for preachment number one, I suppose, on my duty to mix with my
fellow-men, a la Sister Della!"

"Don't you? Oh, I do," sighed Pollyanna. "They're all so nice and so
different, you know. And down here there must be such a lot of them to
be nice and different. Oh, you don't know how glad I am so soon that I
came! I knew I would be, anyway, just as soon as I found out you were
YOU--that is, Miss Wetherby's sister, I mean. I love Miss Wetherby, so
I knew I should you, too; for of course you'd be alike--sisters,
so--even if you weren't twins like Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Peck--and they
weren't quite alike, anyway, on account of the wart. But I reckon you
don't know what I mean, so I'll tell you."

And thus it happened that Mrs. Carew, who had been steeling herself
for a preachment on social ethics, found herself, much to her surprise
and a little to her discomfiture, listening to the story of a wart on
the nose of one Mrs. Peck, Ladies' Aider.

By the time the story was finished the limousine had turned into
Commonwealth Avenue, and Pollyanna immediately began to exclaim at the
beauty of a street which had such a "lovely big long yard all the way
up and down through the middle of it," and which was all the nicer,
she said, "after all those little narrow streets."

"Only I should think every one would want to live on it," she
commented enthusiastically.

"Very likely; but that would hardly be possible," retorted Mrs. Carew,
with uplifted eyebrows.

Pollyanna, mistaking the expression on her face for one of
dissatisfaction that her own home was not on the beautiful Avenue,
hastened to make amends.

"Why, no, of course not," she agreed. "And I didn't mean that the
narrower streets weren't just as nice," she hurried on; "and even
better, maybe, because you could be glad you didn't have to go so far
when you wanted to run across the way to borrow eggs or soda, and--Oh,
but DO you live here?" she interrupted herself, as the car came to a
stop before the imposing Carew doorway. "Do you live here, Mrs.
Carew?"

"Why, yes, of course I live here," returned the lady, with just a
touch of irritation.

"Oh, how glad, GLAD you must be to live in such a perfectly lovely
place!" exulted the little girl, springing to the sidewalk and looking
eagerly about her. "Aren't you glad?"

Mrs. Carew did not reply. With unsmiling lips and frowning brow she
was stepping from the limousine.

For the second time in five minutes, Pollyanna hastened to make
amends.

"Of course I don't mean the kind of glad that's sinfully proud," she
explained, searching Mrs. Carew's face with anxious eyes. "Maybe you
thought I did, same as Aunt Polly used to, sometimes. I don't mean the
kind that's glad because you've got something somebody else can't
have; but the kind that just--just makes you want to shout and yell
and bang doors, you know, even if it isn't proper," she finished,
dancing up and down on her toes.

The chauffeur turned his back precipitately, and busied himself with
the car. Mrs. Carew, still with unsmiling lips and frowning brow led
the way up the broad stone steps.

"Come, Pollyanna," was all she said, crisply.


It was five days later that Della Wetherby received the letter from
her sister, and very eagerly she tore it open. It was the first that
had come since Pollyanna's arrival in Boston.

"My dear Sister," Mrs. Carew had written. "For pity's sake, Della, why
didn't you give me some sort of an idea what to expect from this child
you have insisted upon my taking? I'm nearly wild--and I simply can't
send her away. I've tried to three times, but every time, before I get
the words out of my mouth, she stops them by telling me what a
perfectly lovely time she is having, and how glad she is to be here,
and how good I am to let her live with me while her Aunt Polly has
gone to Germany. Now how, pray, in the face of that, can I turn around
and say 'Well, won't you please go home; I don't want you'? And the
absurd part of it is, I don't believe it has ever entered her head
that I don't WANT her here; and I can't seem to make it enter her
head, either.

"Of course if she begins to preach, and to tell me to count my
blessings, I SHALL send her away. You know I told you, to begin with,
that I wouldn't permit that. And I won't. Two or three times I have
thought she was going to (preach, I mean), but so far she has always
ended up with some ridiculous story about those Ladies' Aiders of
hers; so the sermon gets sidetracked--luckily for her, if she wants to
stay.

"But, really, Della, she is impossible. Listen. In the first place she
is wild with delight over the house. The very first day she got here
she begged me to open every room; and she was not satisfied until
every shade in the house was up, so that she might 'see all the
perfectly lovely things,' which, she declared, were even nicer than
Mr. John Pendleton's--whoever he may be, somebody in Beldingsville, I
believe. Anyhow, he isn't a Ladies' Aider. I've found out that much.

"Then, as if it wasn't enough to keep me running from room to room (as
if I were the guide on a 'personally conducted'), what did she do but
discover a white satin evening gown that I hadn't worn for years, and
beseech me to put it on. And I did put it on--why, I can't imagine,
only that I found myself utterly helpless in her hands.

"But that was only the beginning. She begged then to see everything
that I had, and she was so perfectly funny in her stories of the
missionary barrels, which she used to 'dress out of,' that I had to
laugh--though I almost cried, too, to think of the wretched things
that poor child had to wear. Of course gowns led to jewels, and she
made such a fuss over my two or three rings that I foolishly opened
the safe, just to see her eyes pop out. And, Della, I thought that
child would go crazy. She put on to me every ring, brooch, bracelet,
and necklace that I owned, and insisted on fastening both diamond
tiaras in my hair (when she found out what they were), until there I
sat, hung with pearls and diamonds and emeralds, and feeling like a
heathen goddess in a Hindu temple, especially when that preposterous
child began to dance round and round me, clapping her hands and
chanting, 'Oh, how perfectly lovely, how perfectly lovely! How I would
love to hang you on a string in the window--you'd make such a
beautiful prism!'

"I was just going to ask her what on earth she meant by that when down
she dropped in the middle of the floor and began to cry. And what do
you suppose she was crying for? Because she was so glad she'd got eyes
that could see! Now what do you think of that?

"Of course this isn't all. It's only the beginning. Pollyanna has been
here four days, and she's filled every one of them full. She already
numbers among her friends the ash-man, the policeman on the beat, and
the paper boy, to say nothing of every servant in my employ. They seem
actually bewitched with her, every one of them. But please do not
think _I_ am, for I'm not. I would send the child back to you at once
if I didn't feel obliged to fulfil my promise to keep her this winter.
As for her making me forget Jamie and my great sorrow--that is
impossible. She only makes me feel my loss all the more
keenly--because I have her instead of him. But, as I said, I shall
keep her--until she begins to preach. Then back she goes to you. But
she hasn't preached yet.

                                    "Lovingly but distractedly yours,

                                    "RUTH."

"'Hasn't preached yet,' indeed!" chuckled Della Wetherby to herself,
folding up the closely-written sheets of her sister's letter. "Oh,
Ruth, Ruth! and yet you admit that you've opened every room, raised
every shade, decked yourself in satin and jewels--and Pollyanna hasn't
been there a week yet. But she hasn't preached--oh, no, she hasn't
preached!"




CHAPTER IV

THE GAME AND MRS. CAREW


Boston, to Pollyanna, was a new experience, and certainly Pollyanna,
to Boston--such part of it as was privileged to know her--was very
much of a new experience.

Pollyanna said she liked Boston, but that she did wish it was not
quite so big.

"You see," she explained earnestly to Mrs. Carew, the day following
her arrival, "I want to see and know it ALL, and I can't. It's just
like Aunt Polly's company dinners; there's so much to eat--I mean, to
see--that you don't eat--I mean, see--anything, because you're always
trying to decide what to eat--I mean, to see.

"Of course you can be glad there IS such a lot," resumed Pollyanna,
after taking breath, "'cause a whole lot of anything is nice--that is,
GOOD things; not such things as medicine and funerals, of course!--but
at the same time I couldn't used to help wishing Aunt Polly's company
dinners could be spread out a little over the days when there wasn't
any cake and pie; and I feel the same way about Boston. I wish I could
take part of it home with me up to Beldingsville so I'd have SOMETHING
new next summer. But of course I can't. Cities aren't like frosted
cake--and, anyhow, even the cake didn't keep very well. I tried it,
and it dried up, 'specially the frosting. I reckon the time to take
frosting and good times is while they are going; so I want to see all
I can now while I'm here."

Pollyanna, unlike the people who think that to see the world one must
begin at the most distant point, began her "seeing Boston" by a
thorough exploration of her immediate surroundings--the beautiful
Commonwealth Avenue residence which was now her home. This, with her
school work, fully occupied her time and attention for some days.

There was so much to see, and so much to learn; and everything was so
marvelous and so beautiful, from the tiny buttons in the wall that
flooded the rooms with light, to the great silent ballroom hung with
mirrors and pictures. There were so many delightful people to know,
too, for besides Mrs. Carew herself there were Mary, who dusted the
drawing-rooms, answered the bell, and accompanied Pollyanna to and
from school each day; Bridget, who lived in the kitchen and cooked;
Jennie, who waited at table, and Perkins who drove the automobile. And
they were all so delightful--yet so different!

Pollyanna had arrived on a Monday, so it was almost a week before the
first Sunday. She came downstairs that morning with a beaming
countenance.

"I love Sundays," she sighed happily.

"Do you?" Mrs. Carew's voice had the weariness of one who loves no
day.

"Yes, on account of church, you know, and Sunday school. Which do you
like best, church, or Sunday school?"

"Well, really, I--" began Mrs. Carew, who seldom went to church and
never went to Sunday school.

"'Tis hard to tell, isn't it?" interposed Pollyanna, with luminous but
serious eyes. "But you see _I_ like church best, on account of father.
You know he was a minister, and of course he's really up in Heaven
with mother and the rest of us, but I try to imagine him down here,
lots of times; and it's easiest in church, when the minister is
talking. I shut my eyes and imagine it's father up there; and it helps
lots. I'm so glad we can imagine things, aren't you?"

"I'm not so sure of that, Pollyanna."

"Oh, but just think how much nicer our IMAGINED things are than our
really truly ones--that is, of course, yours aren't, because your REAL
ones are so nice." Mrs. Carew angrily started to speak, but Pollyanna
was hurrying on. "And of course MY real ones are ever so much nicer
than they used to be. But all that time I was hurt, when my legs
didn't go, I just had to keep imagining all the time, just as hard as
I could. And of course now there are lots of times when I do it--like
about father, and all that. And so to-day I'm just going to imagine
it's father up there in the pulpit. What time do we go?"

"GO?"

"To church, I mean."

"But, Pollyanna, I don't--that is, I'd rather not--" Mrs. Carew
cleared her throat and tried again to say that she was not going to
church at all; that she almost never went. But with Pollyanna's
confident little face and happy eyes before her, she could not do it.

"Why, I suppose--about quarter past ten--if we walk," she said then,
almost crossly. "It's only a little way."

Thus it happened that Mrs. Carew on that bright September morning
occupied for the first time in months the Carew pew in the very
fashionable and elegant church to which she had gone as a girl, and
which she still supported liberally--so far as money went.

To Pollyanna that Sunday morning service was a great wonder and joy.
The marvelous music of the vested choir, the opalescent rays from the
jeweled windows, the impassioned voice of the preacher, and the
reverent hush of the worshiping throng filled her with an ecstasy that
left her for a time almost speechless. Not until they were nearly home
did she fervently breathe:

"Oh, Mrs. Carew, I've just been thinking how glad I am we don't have
to live but just one day at a time!"

Mrs. Carew frowned and looked down sharply. Mrs. Carew was in no mood
for preaching. She had just been obliged to endure it from the pulpit,
she told herself angrily, and she would NOT listen to it from this
chit of a child. Moreover, this "living one day at a time" theory was
a particularly pet doctrine of Della's. Was not Della always saying:
"But you only have to live one minute at a time, Ruth, and any one can
endure anything for one minute at a time!"

"Well?" said Mrs. Carew now, tersely.

"Yes. Only think what I'd do if I had to live yesterday and to-day and
to-morrow all at once," sighed Pollyanna. "Such a lot of perfectly
lovely things, you know. But I've had yesterday, and now I'm living
to-day, and I've got to-morrow still coming, and next Sunday, too.
Honestly, Mrs. Carew, if it wasn't Sunday now, and on this nice quiet
street, I should just dance and shout and yell. I couldn't help it.
But it's being Sunday, so, I shall have to wait till I get home and
then take a hymn--the most rejoicingest hymn I can think of. What is
the most rejoicingest hymn? Do you know, Mrs. Carew?"

"No, I can't say that I do," answered Mrs. Carew, faintly, looking
very much as if she were searching for something she had lost. For a
woman who expects, because things are so bad, to be told that she need
stand only one day at a time, it is disarming, to say the least, to be
told that, because things are so good, it is lucky she does not HAVE
to stand but one day at a time!

On Monday, the next morning, Pollyanna went to school for the first
time alone. She knew the way perfectly now, and it was only a short
walk. Pollyanna enjoyed her school very much. It was a small private
school for girls, and was quite a new experience, in its way; but
Pollyanna liked new experiences.

Mrs. Carew, however, did not like new experiences, and she was having
a good many of them these days. For one who is tired of everything to
be in so intimate a companionship with one to whom everything is a
fresh and fascinating joy must needs result in annoyance, to say the
least. And Mrs. Carew was more than annoyed. She was exasperated. Yet
to herself she was forced to admit that if any one asked her why she
was exasperated, the only reason she could give would be "Because
Pollyanna is so glad"--and even Mrs. Carew would hardly like to give
an answer like that.

To Della, however, Mrs. Carew did write that the word "glad" had got
on her nerves, and that sometimes she wished she might never hear it
again. She still admitted that Pollyanna had not preached--that she
had not even once tried to make her play the game. What the child did
do, however, was invariably to take Mrs. Carew's "gladness" as a
matter of course, which, to one who HAD no gladness, was most
provoking.

It was during the second week of Pollyanna's stay that Mrs. Carew's
annoyance overflowed into irritable remonstrance. The immediate cause
thereof was Pollyanna's glowing conclusion to a story about one of her
Ladies' Aiders.

"She was playing the game, Mrs. Carew. But maybe you don't know what
the game is. I'll tell you. It's a lovely game."

But Mrs. Carew held up her hand.

"Never mind, Pollyanna," she demurred. "I know all about the game. My
sister told me, and--and I must say that I--I should not care for it."

"Why, of course not, Mrs. Carew!" exclaimed Pollyanna in quick
apology. "I didn't mean the game for you. You couldn't play it, of
course."

"I COULDN'T play it!" ejaculated Mrs. Carew, who, though she WOULD not
play this silly game, was in no mood to be told that she COULD not.

"Why, no, don't you see?" laughed Pollyanna, gleefully. "The game is
to find something in everything to be glad about; and you couldn't
even begin to hunt, for there isn't anything about you but what you
COULD be glad about. There wouldn't BE any game to it for you! Don't
you see?"

Mrs. Carew flushed angrily. In her annoyance she said more than
perhaps she meant to say.

"Well, no, Pollyanna, I can't say that I do," she differed coldly. "As
it happens, you see, I can find nothing whatever to be--glad for."

For a moment Pollyanna stared blankly. Then she fell back in
amazement.

"Why, MRS. CAREW!" she breathed.

"Well, what is there--for me?" challenged the woman, forgetting all
about, for the moment, that she was never going to allow Pollyanna to
"preach."

"Why, there's--there's everything," murmured Pollyanna, still with
that dazed unbelief. "There--there's this beautiful house."

"It's just a place to eat and sleep--and I don't want to eat and
sleep."

"But there are all these perfectly lovely things," faltered Pollyanna.

"I'm tired of them."

"And your automobile that will take you anywhere."

"I don't want to go anywhere."

Pollyanna quite gasped aloud.

"But think of the people and things you could see, Mrs. Carew."

"They would not interest me, Pollyanna."

Once again Pollyanna stared in amazement. The troubled frown on her
face deepened.

"But, Mrs. Carew, I don't see," she urged. "Always, before, there have
been BAD things for folks to play the game on, and the badder they are
the more fun 'tis to get them out--find the things to be glad for, I
mean. But where there AREN'T any bad things, I shouldn't know how to
play the game myself."

There was no answer for a time. Mrs. Carew sat with her eyes out the
window. Gradually the angry rebellion on her face changed to a look of
hopeless sadness. Very slowly then she turned and said:

"Pollyanna, I had thought I wouldn't tell you this; but I've decided
that I will. I'm going to tell you why nothing that I have can make
me--glad." And she began the story of Jamie, the little four-year-old
boy who, eight long years before, had stepped as into another world,
leaving the door fast shut between.

"And you've never seen him since--anywhere?" faltered Pollyanna, with
tear-wet eyes, when the story was done.

"Never."

"But we'll find him, Mrs. Carew--I'm sure we'll find him."

Mrs. Carew shook her head sadly.

"But I can't. I've looked everywhere, even in foreign lands."

"But he must be somewhere."

"He may be--dead, Pollyanna."

Pollyanna gave a quick cry.

"Oh, no, Mrs. Carew. Please don't say that! Let's imagine he's alive.
We CAN do that, and that'll help; and when we get him IMAGINED alive
we can just as well imagine we're going to find him. And that'll help
a whole lot more."

"But I'm afraid he's--dead, Pollyanna," choked Mrs. Carew.

"You don't know it for sure, do you?" besought the little girl,
anxiously.

"N-no."

"Well, then, you're just imagining it," maintained Pollyanna, in
triumph. "And if you can imagine him dead, you can just as well
imagine him alive, and it'll be a whole lot nicer while you're doing
it. Don't you see? And some day, I'm just sure you'll find him. Why,
Mrs. Carew, you CAN play the game now! You can play it on Jamie. You
can be glad every day, for every day brings you just one day nearer to
the time when you're going to find him. See?"

But Mrs. Carew did not "see." She rose drearily to her feet and said:

"No, no, child! You don't understand--you don't understand. Now run
away, please, and read, or do anything you like. My head aches. I'm
going to lie down."

And Pollyanna, with a troubled, sober face, slowly left the room.




CHAPTER V

POLLYANNA TAKES A WALK


It was on the second Saturday afternoon that Pollyanna took her
memorable walk. Heretofore Pollyanna had not walked out alone, except
to go to and from school. That she would ever attempt to explore
Boston streets by herself, never occurred to Mrs. Carew, hence she
naturally had never forbidden it. In Beldingsville, however, Pollyanna
had found--especially at the first--her chief diversion in strolling
about the rambling old village streets in search of new friends and
new adventures.

On this particular Saturday afternoon Mrs. Carew had said, as she
often did say: "There, there, child, run away; please do. Go where you
like and do what you like, only don't, please, ask me any more
questions to-day!"

Until now, left to herself, Pollyanna had always found plenty to
interest her within the four walls of the house; for, if inanimate
things failed, there were yet Mary, Jennie, Bridget, and Perkins.
To-day, however, Mary had a headache, Jennie was trimming a new hat,
Bridget was making apple pies, and Perkins was nowhere to be found.
Moreover it was a particularly beautiful September day, and nothing
within the house was so alluring as the bright sunlight and balmy air
outside. So outside Pollyanna went and dropped herself down on the
steps.

For some time she watched in silence the well-dressed men, women, and
children, who walked briskly by the house, or else sauntered more
leisurely through the parkway that extended up and down the middle of
the Avenue. Then she got to her feet, skipped down the steps, and
stood looking, first to the right, then to the left.

Pollyanna had decided that she, too, would take a walk. It was a
beautiful day for a walk, and not once, yet, had she taken one at
all--not a REAL walk. Just going to and from school did not count. So
she would take one to-day. Mrs. Carew would not mind. Had she not told
her to do just what she pleased so long as she asked no more
questions? And there was the whole long afternoon before her. Only
think what a lot one might see in a whole long afternoon! And it
really was such a beautiful day. She would go--this way! And with a
little whirl and skip of pure joy, Pollyanna turned and walked
blithely down the Avenue.

Into the eyes of those she met Pollyanna smiled joyously. She was
disappointed--but not surprised--that she received no answering smile
in return. She was used to that now--in Boston. She still smiled,
however, hopefully: there might be some one, sometime, who would smile
back.

Mrs. Carew's home was very near the beginning of Commonwealth Avenue,
so it was not long before Pollyanna found herself at the edge of a
street crossing her way at right angles. Across the street, in all its
autumn glory, lay what to Pollyanna was the most beautiful "yard" she
had ever seen--the Boston Public Garden.

For a moment Pollyanna hesitated, her eyes longingly fixed on the
wealth of beauty before her. That it was the private grounds of some
rich man or woman, she did not for a moment doubt. Once, with Dr. Ames
at the Sanatorium, she had been taken to call on a lady who lived in a
beautiful house surrounded by just such walks and trees and
flower-beds as these.

Pollyanna wanted now very much to cross the street and walk in those
grounds, but she doubted if she had the right. To be sure, others were
there, moving about, she could see; but they might be invited guests,
of course. After she had seen two women, one man, and a little girl
unhesitatingly enter the gate and walk briskly down the path, however,
Pollyanna concluded that she, too, might go. Watching her chance she
skipped nimbly across the street and entered the Garden.

It was even more beautiful close at hand than it had been at a
distance. Birds twittered over her head, and a squirrel leaped across
the path ahead of her. On benches here and there sat men, women, and
children. Through the trees flashed the sparkle of the sun on water;
and from somewhere came the shouts of children and the sound of music.

Once again Pollyanna hesitated; then, a little timidly, she accosted a
handsomely-dressed young woman coming toward her.

"Please, is this--a party?" she asked.

The young woman stared.

"A party!" she repeated dazedly.

"Yes'm. I mean, is it all right for me--to be here?"

"For you to be here? Why, of course. It's for--for everybody!"
exclaimed the young woman.

"Oh, that's all right, then. I'm glad I came," beamed Pollyanna.

The young woman said nothing; but she turned back and looked at
Pollyanna still dazedly as she hurried away.

Pollyanna, not at all surprised that the owner of this beautiful place
should be so generous as to give a party to everybody, continued on
her way. At the turn of the path she came upon a small girl and a doll
carriage. She stopped with a glad little cry, but she had not said a
dozen words before from somewhere came a young woman with hurrying
steps and a disapproving voice; a young woman who held out her hand to
the small girl, and said sharply:

"Here, Gladys, Gladys, come away with me. Hasn't mama told you not to
talk to strange children?"

"But I'm not strange children," explained Pollyanna in eager defense.
"I live right here in Boston, now, and--" But the young woman and the
little girl dragging the doll carriage were already far down the path;
and with a half-stifled sigh Pollyanna fell back. For a moment she
stood silent, plainly disappointed; then resolutely she lifted her
chin and went forward.

"Well, anyhow, I can be glad for that," she nodded to herself, "for
now maybe I'll find somebody even nicer--Susie Smith, perhaps, or even
Mrs. Carew's Jamie. Anyhow, I can IMAGINE I'm going to find them; and
if I don't find THEM, I can find SOMEBODY!" she finished, her wistful
eyes on the self-absorbed people all about her.

Undeniably Pollyanna was lonesome. Brought up by her father and the
Ladies' Aid Society in a small Western town, she had counted every
house in the village her home, and every man, woman, and child her
friend. Coming to her aunt in Vermont at eleven years of age, she had
promptly assumed that conditions would differ only in that the homes
and the friends would be new, and therefore even more delightful,
possibly, for they would be "different"--and Pollyanna did so love
"different" things and people! Her first and always her supreme
delight in Beldingsville, therefore, had been her long rambles about
the town and the charming visits with the new friends she had made.
Quite naturally, in consequence, Boston, as she first saw it, seemed
to Pollyanna even more delightfully promising in its possibilities.

Thus far, however, Pollyanna had to admit that in one respect, at
least, it had been disappointing: she had been here nearly two weeks
and she did not yet know the people who lived across the street, or
even next door. More inexplicable still, Mrs. Carew herself did not
know many of them, and not any of them well. She seemed, indeed,
utterly indifferent to her neighbors, which was most amazing from
Pollyanna's point of view; but nothing she could say appeared to
change Mrs. Carew's attitude in the matter at all.

"They do not interest me, Pollyanna," was all she would say; and with
this, Pollyanna--whom they did interest very much--was forced to be
content.

To-day, on her walk, however, Pollyanna had started out with high
hopes, yet thus far she seemed destined to be disappointed. Here all
about her were people who were doubtless most delightful--if she only
knew them. But she did not know them. Worse yet, there seemed to be no
prospect that she would know them, for they did not, apparently, wish
to know her: Pollyanna was still smarting under the nurse's sharp
warning concerning "strange children."

"Well, I reckon I'll just have to show 'em that I'm not strange
children," she said at last to herself, moving confidently forward
again.

Pursuant of this idea Pollyanna smiled sweetly into the eyes of the
next person she met, and said blithely:

"It's a nice day, isn't it?"

"Er--what? Oh, y-yes, it is," murmured the lady addressed, as she
hastened on a little faster.

Twice again Pollyanna tried the same experiment, but with like
disappointing results. Soon she came upon the little pond that she had
seen sparkling in the sunlight through the trees. It was a beautiful
pond, and on it were several pretty little boats full of laughing
children. As she watched them, Pollyanna felt more and more
dissatisfied to remain by herself. It was then that, spying a man
sitting alone not far away, she advanced slowly toward him and sat
down on the other end of the bench. Once Pollyanna would have danced
unhesitatingly to the man's side and suggested acquaintanceship with a
cheery confidence that had no doubt of a welcome; but recent rebuffs
had filled her with unaccustomed diffidence. Covertly she looked at
the man now.

He was not very good to look at. His garments, though new, were dusty,
and plainly showed lack of care. They were of the cut and style
(though Pollyanna of course did not know this) that the State gives
its prisoners as a freedom suit. His face was a pasty white, and was
adorned with a week's beard. His hat was pulled far down over his
eyes. With his hands in his pockets he sat idly staring at the ground.

For a long minute Pollyanna said nothing; then hopefully she began:

"It IS a nice day, isn't it?"

The man turned his head with a start.

"Eh? Oh--er--what did you say?" he questioned, with a curiously
frightened look around to make sure the remark was addressed to him.

"I said 'twas a nice day," explained Pollyanna in hurried earnestness;
"but I don't care about that especially. That is, of course I'm glad
it's a nice day, but I said it just as a beginning to things, and I'd
just as soon talk about something else--anything else. It's only that
I wanted you to talk--about something, you see."

The man gave a low laugh. Even to Pollyanna the laugh sounded a little
queer, though she did not know (as did the man) that a laugh to his
lips had been a stranger for many months.

"So you want me to talk, do you?" he said a little sadly. "Well, I
don't see but what I shall have to do it, then. Still, I should think
a nice little lady like you might find lots nicer people to talk to
than an old duffer like me."

"Oh, but I like old duffers," exclaimed Pollyanna quickly; "that is, I
like the OLD part, and I don't know what a duffer is, so I can't
dislike that. Besides, if you are a duffer, I reckon I like duffers.
Anyhow, I like you," she finished, with a contented little settling of
herself in her seat that carried conviction.

"Humph! Well, I'm sure I'm flattered," smiled the man, ironically.
Though his face and words expressed polite doubt, it might have been
noticed that he sat a little straighter on the bench. "And, pray, what
shall we talk about?"

"It's--it's infinitesimal to me. That means I don't care, doesn't it?"
asked Pollyanna, with a beaming smile. "Aunt Polly says that, whatever
I talk about, anyhow, I always bring up at the Ladies' Aiders. But I
reckon that's because they brought me up first, don't you? We might
talk about the party. I think it's a perfectly beautiful party--now
that I know some one."

"P-party?"

"Yes--this, you know--all these people here to-day. It IS a party,
isn't it? The lady said it was for everybody, so I stayed--though I
haven't got to where the house is, yet, that's giving the party."

The man's lips twitched.

"Well, little lady, perhaps it is a party, in a way," he smiled; "but
the 'house' that's giving it is the city of Boston. This is the Public
Garden--a public park, you understand, for everybody."

"Is it? Always? And I may come here any time I want to? Oh, how
perfectly lovely! That's even nicer than I thought it could be. I'd
worried for fear I couldn't ever come again, after to-day, you see.
I'm glad now, though, that I didn't know it just at the first, for
it's all the nicer now. Nice things are nicer when you've been
worrying for fear they won't be nice, aren't they?"

"Perhaps they are--if they ever turn out to be nice at all," conceded
the man, a little gloomily.

"Yes, I think so," nodded Pollyanna, not noticing the gloom. "But
isn't it beautiful--here?" she gloried. "I wonder if Mrs. Carew knows
about it--that it's for anybody, so. Why, I should think everybody
would want to come here all the time, and just stay and look around."

The man's face hardened.

"Well, there are a few people in the world who have got a job--who've
got something to do besides just to come here and stay and look
around; but I don't happen to be one of them."

"Don't you? Then you can be glad for that, can't you?" sighed
Pollyanna, her eyes delightedly following a passing boat.

The man's lips parted indignantly, but no words came. Pollyanna was
still talking.

"I wish _I_ didn't have anything to do but that. I have to go to
school. Oh, I like school; but there's such a whole lot of things I
like better. Still I'm glad I CAN go to school. I'm 'specially glad
when I remember how last winter I didn't think I could ever go again.
You see, I lost my legs for a while--I mean, they didn't go; and you
know you never know how much you use things, till you don't have 'em.
And eyes, too. Did you ever think what a lot you do with eyes? I
didn't till I went to the Sanatorium. There was a lady there who had
just got blind the year before. I tried to get her to play the
game--finding something to be glad about, you know--but she said she
couldn't; and if I wanted to know why, I might tie up my eyes with my
handkerchief for just one hour. And I did. It was awful. Did you ever
try it?"

"Why, n-no, I didn't." A half-vexed, half-baffled expression was
coming to the man's face.

"Well, don't. It's awful. You can't do anything--not anything that you
want to do. But I kept it on the whole hour. Since then I've been so
glad, sometimes--when I see something perfectly lovely like this, you
know--I've been so glad I wanted to cry;--'cause I COULD see it, you
know. She's playing the game now, though--that blind lady is. Miss
Wetherby told me."

"The--GAME?"

"Yes; the glad game. Didn't I tell you? Finding something in
everything to be glad about. Well, she's found it now--about her eyes,
you know. Her husband is the kind of a man that goes to help make the
laws, and she had him ask for one that would help blind people,
'specially little babies. And she went herself and talked and told
those men how it felt to be blind. And they made it--that law. And
they said that she did more than anybody else, even her husband, to
help make it, and that they didn't believe there would have been any
law at all if it hadn't been for her. So now she says she's glad she
lost her eyes, 'cause she's kept so many little babies from growing up
to be blind like her. So you see she's playing it--the game. But I
reckon you don't know about the game yet, after all; so I'll tell you.
It started this way." And Pollyanna, with her eyes on the shimmering
beauty all about her, told of the little pair of crutches of long ago,
which should have been a doll.

When the story was finished there was a long silence; then, a little
abruptly the man got to his feet.

"Oh, are you going away NOW?" she asked in open disappointment.

"Yes, I'm going now." He smiled down at her a little queerly.

"But you're coming back sometime?"

He shook his head--but again he smiled.

"I hope not--and I believe not, little girl. You see, I've made a
great discovery to-day. I thought I was down and out. I thought there
was no place for me anywhere--now. But I've just discovered that I've
got two eyes, two arms, and two legs. Now I'm going to use them--and
I'm going to MAKE somebody understand that I know how to use them!"

The next moment he was gone.

"Why, what a funny man!" mused Pollyanna. "Still, he was nice--and he
was different, too," she finished, rising to her feet and resuming her
walk.

Pollyanna was now once more her usual cheerful self, and she stepped
with the confident assurance of one who has no doubt. Had not the man
said that this was a public park, and that she had as good a right as
anybody to be there? She walked nearer to the pond and crossed the
bridge to the starting-place of the little boats. For some time she
watched the children happily, keeping a particularly sharp lookout for
the possible black curls of Susie Smith. She would have liked to take
a ride in the pretty boats, herself, but the sign said "Five cents" a
trip, and she did not have any money with her. She smiled hopefully
into the faces of several women, and twice she spoke tentatively. But
no one spoke first to her, and those whom she addressed eyed her
coldly, and made scant response.

After a time she turned her steps into still another path. Here she
found a white-faced boy in a wheel chair. She would have spoken to
him, but he was so absorbed in his book that she turned away after a
moment's wistful gazing. Soon then she came upon a pretty, but
sad-looking young girl sitting alone, staring at nothing, very much as
the man had sat. With a contented little cry Pollyanna hurried
forward.

"Oh, how do you do?" she beamed. "I'm so glad I found you! I've been
hunting ever so long for you," she asserted, dropping herself down on
the unoccupied end of the bench.

The pretty girl turned with a start, an eager look of expectancy in
her eyes.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, falling back in plain disappointment. "I
thought-- Why, what do you mean?" she demanded aggrievedly. "I never
set eyes on you before in my life."

"No, I didn't you, either," smiled Pollyanna; "but I've been hunting
for you, just the same. That is, of course I didn't know you were
going to be YOU exactly. It's just that I wanted to find some one that
looked lonesome, and that didn't have anybody. Like me, you know. So
many here to-day have got folks. See?"

"Yes, I see," nodded the girl, falling back into her old listlessness.
"But, poor little kid, it's too bad YOU should find it out--so soon."

"Find what out?"

"That the lonesomest place in all the world is in a crowd in a big
city."

Pollyanna frowned and pondered.

"Is it? I don't see how it can be. I don't see how you can be lonesome
when you've got folks all around you. Still--" she hesitated, and the
frown deepened. "I WAS lonesome this afternoon, and there WERE folks
all around me; only they didn't seem to--to think--or notice."

The pretty girl smiled bitterly.

"That's just it. They don't ever think--or notice, crowds don't."

"But some folks do. We can be glad some do," urged Pollyanna. "Now
when I--"

"Oh, yes, some do," interrupted the other. As she spoke she shivered
and looked fearfully down the path beyond Pollyanna. "Some notice--too
much."

Pollyanna shrank back in dismay. Repeated rebuffs that afternoon had
given her a new sensitiveness.

"Do you mean--me?" she stammered. "That you wished I
hadn't--noticed--you?"

"No, no, kiddie! I meant--some one quite different from you. Some one
that hadn't ought to notice. I was glad to have you speak, only--I
thought at first it was some one from home."

"Oh, then you don't live here, either, any more than I do--I mean, for
keeps."

"Oh, yes, I live here now," sighed the girl; "that is, if you can call
it living--what I do."

"What do you do?" asked Pollyanna interestedly.

"Do? I'll tell you what I do," cried the other, with sudden
bitterness. "From morning till night I sell fluffy laces and perky
bows to girls that laugh and talk and KNOW each other. Then I go home
to a little back room up three flights just big enough to hold a lumpy
cot-bed, a washstand with a nicked pitcher, one rickety chair, and me.
It's like a furnace in the summer and an ice box in the winter; but
it's all the place I've got, and I'm supposed to stay in it--when I
ain't workin'. But I've come out to-day. I ain't goin' to stay in that
room, and I ain't goin' to go to any old library to read, neither.
It's our last half-holiday this year--and an extra one, at that; and
I'm going to have a good time--for once. I'm just as young, and I like
to laugh and joke just as well as them girls I sell bows to all day.
Well, to-day I'm going to laugh and joke."

Pollyanna smiled and nodded her approval.

"I'm glad you feel that way. I do, too. It's a lot more fun--to be
happy, isn't it? Besides, the Bible tells us to;--rejoice and be glad,
I mean. It tells us to eight hundred times. Probably you know about
'em, though--the rejoicing texts."

The pretty girl shook her head. A queer look came to her face.

"Well, no," she said dryly. "I can't say I WAS thinkin'--of the
Bible."

"Weren't you? Well, maybe not; but, you see, MY father was a minister,
and he--"

"A MINISTER?"

"Yes. Why, was yours, too?" cried Pollyanna, answering something she
saw in the other's face.

"Y-yes." A faint color crept up to the girl's forehead.

"Oh, and has he gone like mine to be with God and the angels?"

The girl turned away her head.

"No. He's still living--back home," she answered, half under her
breath.

"Oh, how glad you must be," sighed Pollyanna, enviously. "Sometimes I
get to thinking, if only I could just SEE father once--but you do see
your father, don't you?"

"Not often. You see, I'm down--here."

"But you CAN see him--and I can't, mine. He's gone to be with mother
and the rest of us up in Heaven, and-- Have you got a mother, too--an
earth mother?"

"Y-yes." The girl stirred restlessly, and half moved as if to go.

"Oh, then you can see both of them," breathed Pollyanna, unutterable
longing in her face. "Oh, how glad you must be! For there just isn't
anybody, is there, that really CARES and notices quite so much as
fathers and mothers. You see I know, for I had a father until I was
eleven years old; but, for a mother, I had Ladies' Aiders for ever so
long, till Aunt Polly took me. Ladies' Aiders are lovely, but of
course they aren't like mothers, or even Aunt Pollys; and--"

On and on Pollyanna talked. Pollyanna was in her element now.
Pollyanna loved to talk. That there was anything strange or unwise or
even unconventional in this intimate telling of her thoughts and her
history to a total stranger on a Boston park bench did not once occur
to Pollyanna. To Pollyanna all men, women, and children were friends,
either known or unknown; and thus far she had found the unknown quite
as delightful as the known, for with them there was always the
excitement of mystery and adventure--while they were changing from the
unknown to the known.

To this young girl at her side, therefore, Pollyanna talked
unreservedly of her father, her Aunt Polly, her Western home, and her
journey East to Vermont. She told of new friends and old friends, and
of course she told of the game. Pollyanna almost always told everybody
of the game, either sooner or later. It was, indeed, so much a part of
her very self that she could hardly have helped telling of it.

As for the girl--she said little. She was not now sitting in her old
listless attitude, however, and to her whole self had come a marked
change. The flushed cheeks, frowning brow, troubled eyes, and
nervously working fingers were plainly the signs of some inward
struggle. From time to time she glanced apprehensively down the path
beyond Pollyanna, and it was after such a glance that she clutched the
little girl's arm.

"See here, kiddie, for just a minute don't you leave me. Do you hear?
Stay right where you are? There's a man I know comin'; but no matter
what he says, don't you pay no attention, and DON'T YOU GO. I'm goin'
to stay with YOU. See?"

Before Pollyanna could more than gasp her wonderment and surprise, she
found herself looking up into the face of a very handsome young
gentleman, who had stopped before them.

"Oh, here you are," he smiled pleasantly, lifting his hat to
Pollyanna's companion. "I'm afraid I'll have to begin with an
apology--I'm a little late."

"It don't matter, sir," said the young girl, speaking hurriedly.
"I--I've decided not to go."

The young man gave a light laugh.

"Oh, come, my clear, don't be hard on a chap because he's a little
late!"

"It isn't that, really," defended the girl, a swift red flaming into
her cheeks. "I mean--I'm not going."

"Nonsense!" The man stopped smiling. He spoke sharply. "You said
yesterday you'd go."

"I know; but I've changed my mind. I told my little friend here--I'd
stay with her."

"Oh, but if you'd rather go with this nice young gentleman," began
Pollyanna, anxiously; but she fell back silenced at the look the girl
gave her.

"I tell you I had NOT rather go. I'm not going."

"And, pray, why this sudden right-about face?" demanded the young man
with an expression that made him suddenly look, to Pollyanna, not
quite so handsome. "Yesterday you said--"

"I know I did," interrupted the girl, feverishly. "But I knew then
that I hadn't ought to. Let's call it--that I know it even better now.
That's all." And she turned away resolutely.

It was not all. The man spoke again, twice. He coaxed, then he sneered
with a hateful look in his eyes. At last he said something very low
and angry, which Pollyanna did not understand. The next moment he
wheeled about and strode away.

The girl watched him tensely till he passed quite out of sight, then,
relaxing, she laid a shaking hand on Pollyanna's arm.

"Thanks, kiddie. I reckon I owe you--more than you know. Good-by."

"But you aren't going away NOW!" bemoaned Pollyanna.

The girl sighed wearily.

"I got to. He might come back, and next time I might not be able to--"
She clipped the words short and rose to her feet. For a moment she
hesitated, then she choked bitterly: "You see, he's the kind
that--notices too much, and that hadn't ought to notice--ME--at all!"
With that she was gone.

"Why, what a funny lady," murmured Pollyanna, looking wistfully after
the vanishing figure. "She was nice, but she was sort of different,
too," she commented, rising to her feet and moving idly down the path.




CHAPTER VI

JERRY TO THE RESCUE


It was not long before Pollyanna reached the edge of the Garden at a
corner where two streets crossed. It was a wonderfully interesting
corner, with its hurrying cars, automobiles, carriages and
pedestrians. A huge red bottle in a drug-store window caught her eye,
and from down the street came the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Hesitating
only a moment Pollyanna darted across the corner and skipped lightly
down the street toward the entrancing music.

Pollyanna found much to interest her now. In the store windows were
marvelous objects, and around the hurdy-gurdy, when she had reached
it, she found a dozen dancing children, most fascinating to watch. So
altogether delightful, indeed, did this pastime prove to be that
Pollyanna followed the hurdy-gurdy for some distance, just to see
those children dance. Presently she found herself at a corner so busy
that a very big man in a belted blue coat helped the people across the
street. For an absorbed minute she watched him in silence; then, a
little timidly, she herself started to cross.

It was a wonderful experience. The big, blue-coated man saw her at
once and promptly beckoned to her. He even walked to meet her. Then,
through a wide lane with puffing motors and impatient horses on either
hand, she walked unscathed to the further curb. It gave her a
delightful sensation, so delightful that, after a minute, she walked
back. Twice again, after short intervals, she trod the fascinating way
so magically opened at the lifting of the big man's hand. But the last
time her conductor left her at the curb, he gave a puzzled frown.

[Illustration: "Twice again, after short intervals, she trod the
fascinating way"]

"See here, little girl, ain't you the same one what crossed a minute
ago?" he demanded. "And again before that?"

"Yes, sir," beamed Pollyanna. "I've been across four times!"

"Well!" the officer began to bluster; but Pollyanna was still talking.

"And it's been nicer every time!"

"Oh-h, it has--has it?" mumbled the big man, lamely. Then, with a
little more spirit he sputtered: "What do you think I'm here for--just
to tote you back and forth?"

"Oh, no, sir," dimpled Pollyanna. "Of course you aren't just for me!
There are all these others. I know what you are. You're a policeman.
We've got one of you out where I live at Mrs. Carew's, only he's the
kind that just walks on the sidewalk, you know. I used to think you
were soldiers, on account of your gold buttons and blue hats; but I
know better now. Only I think you ARE a kind of a soldier, 'cause
you're so brave--standing here like this, right in the middle of all
these teams and automobiles, helping folks across."

"Ho--ho! Brrrr!" spluttered the big man, coloring like a schoolboy and
throwing back his head with a hearty laugh. "Ho--ho! Just as if--" He
broke off with a quick lifting of his hand. The next moment he was
escorting a plainly very much frightened little old lady from curb to
curb. If his step were a bit more pompous, and his chest a bit more
full, it must have been only an unconscious tribute to the watching
eyes of the little girl back at the starting-point. A moment later,
with a haughtily permissive wave of his hand toward the chafing
drivers and chauffeurs, he strolled back to Pollyanna.

"Oh, that was splendid!" she greeted him, with shining eyes. "I love
to see you do it--and it's just like the Children of Israel crossing
the Red Sea, isn't it?--with you holding back the waves for the people
to cross. And how glad you must be all the time, that you can do it! I
used to think being a doctor was the very gladdest business there was,
but I reckon, after all, being a policeman is gladder yet--to help
frightened people like this, you know. And--" But with another
"Brrrr!" and an embarrassed laugh, the big blue-coated man was back in
the middle of the street, and Pollyanna was all alone on the
curbstone.

For only a minute longer did Pollyanna watch her fascinating "Red
Sea," then, with a regretful backward glance, she turned away.

"I reckon maybe I'd better be going home now," she meditated. "It must
be 'most dinner time." And briskly she started to walk back by the way
she had come.

Not until she had hesitated at several corners, and unwittingly made
two false turns, did Pollyanna grasp the fact that "going back home"
was not to be so easy as she had thought it to be. And not until she
came to a building which she knew she had never seen before, did she
fully realize that she had lost her way.

She was on a narrow street, dirty, and ill-paved. Dingy tenement
blocks and a few unattractive stores were on either side. All about
were jabbering men and chattering women--though not one word of what
they said could Pollyanna understand. Moreover, she could not help
seeing that the people looked at her very curiously, as if they knew
she did not belong there.

Several times, already, she had asked her way, but in vain. No one
seemed to know where Mrs. Carew lived; and, the last two times, those
addressed had answered with a gesture and a jumble of words which
Pollyanna, after some thought, decided must be "Dutch," the kind the
Haggermans--the only foreign family in Beldingsville--used.

On and on, down one street and up another, Pollyanna trudged. She was
thoroughly frightened now. She was hungry, too, and very tired. Her
feet ached, and her eyes smarted with the tears she was trying so hard
to hold back. Worse yet, it was unmistakably beginning to grow dark.

"Well, anyhow," she choked to herself, "I'm going to be glad I'm lost,
'cause it'll be so nice when I get found. I CAN be glad for that!"

It was at a noisy corner where two broader streets crossed that
Pollyanna finally came to a dismayed stop. This time the tears quite
overflowed, so that, lacking a handkerchief, she had to use the backs
of both hands to wipe them away.

"Hullo, kid, why the weeps?" queried a cheery voice. "What's up?"

With a relieved little cry Pollyanna turned to confront a small boy
carrying a bundle of newspapers under his arm.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" she exclaimed. "I've so wanted to see
some one who didn't talk Dutch!"

The small boy grinned.

"Dutch nothin'!" he scoffed. "You mean Dago, I bet ye."

Pollyanna gave a slight frown.

"Well, anyway, it--it wasn't English," she said doubtfully; "and they
couldn't answer my questions. But maybe you can. Do you know where
Mrs. Carew lives?"

"Nix! You can search me."

"Wha-at?" queried Pollyanna, still more doubtfully.

The boy grinned again.

"I say not in mine. I guess I ain't acquainted with the lady."

"But isn't there anybody anywhere that is?" implored Pollyanna. "You
see, I just went out for a walk and I got lost. I've been ever and
ever so far, but I can't find the house at all; and it's supper--I
mean dinner time and getting dark. I want to get back. I MUST get
back."

"Gee! Well, I should worry!" sympathized the boy.

"Yes, and I'm afraid Mrs. Carew'll worry, too," sighed Pollyanna.

"Gorry! if you ain't the limit," chuckled the youth, unexpectedly.
"But, say, listen! Don't ye know the name of the street ye want?"

"No--only that it's some kind of an avenue," desponded Pollyanna.

"A avenOO, is it? Sure, now, some class to that! We're doin' fine.
What's the number of the house? Can ye tell me that? Just scratch your
head!"

"Scratch--my--head?" Pollyanna frowned questioningly, and raised a
tentative hand to her hair.

The boy eyed her with disdain.

"Aw, come off yer perch! Ye ain't so dippy as all that. I say, don't
ye know the number of the house ye want?"

"N-no, except there's a seven in it," returned Pollyanna, with a
faintly hopeful air.

"Won't ye listen ter that?" gibed the scornful youth. "There's a seven
in it--an' she expects me ter know it when I see it!"

"Oh, I should know the house, if I could only see it," declared
Pollyanna, eagerly; "and I think I'd know the street, too, on account
of the lovely long yard running right up and down through the middle
of it."

This time it was the boy who gave a puzzled frown.

"YARD?" he queried, "in the middle of a street?"

"Yes--trees and grass, you know, with a walk in the middle of it, and
seats, and--" But the boy interrupted her with a whoop of delight.

"Gee whiz! Commonwealth Avenue, sure as yer livin'! Wouldn't that get
yer goat, now?"

"Oh, do you know--do you, really?" besought Pollyanna. "That sounded
like it--only I don't know what you meant about the goat part. There
aren't any goats there. I don't think they'd allow--"

"Goats nothin'!" scoffed the boy. "You bet yer sweet life I know where
'tis! Don't I tote Sir James up there to the Garden 'most ev'ry day?
An' I'll take YOU, too. Jest ye hang out here till I get on ter my job
again, an' sell out my stock. Then we'll make tracks for that 'ere
Avenue 'fore ye can say Jack Robinson."

"You mean you'll take me--home?" appealed Pollyanna, still plainly not
quite understanding.

"Sure! It's a cinch--if you know the house."

"Oh, yes, I know the house," replied the literal Pollyanna, anxiously,
"but I don't know whether it's a--a cinch, or not. If it isn't, can't
you--"

But the boy only threw her another disdainful glance and darted off
into the thick of the crowd. A moment later Pollyanna heard his
strident call of "paper, paper! Herald, Globe,--paper, sir?"

With a sigh of relief Pollyanna stepped back into a doorway and
waited. She was tired, but she was happy. In spite of sundry puzzling
aspects of the case, she yet trusted the boy, and she had perfect
confidence that he could take her home.

"He's nice, and I like him," she said to herself, following with her
eyes the boy's alert, darting figure. "But he does talk funny. His
words SOUND English, but some of them don't seem to make any sense
with the rest of what he says. But then, I'm glad he found me,
anyway," she finished with a contented little sigh.

It was not long before the boy returned, his hands empty.

"Come on, kid. All aboard," he called cheerily. "Now we'll hit the
trail for the Avenue. If I was the real thing, now, I'd tote ye home
in style in a buzzwagon; but seein' as how I hain't got the dough,
we'll have ter hoof it."

It was, for the most part, a silent walk. Pollyanna, for once in her
life, was too tired to talk, even of the Ladies' Aiders; and the boy
was intent on picking out the shortest way to his goal. When the
Public Garden was reached, Pollyanna did exclaim joyfully:

"Oh, now I'm 'most there! I remember this place. I had a perfectly
lovely time here this afternoon. It's only a little bit of a ways home
now."

"That's the stuff! Now we're gettin' there," crowed the boy. "What'd I
tell ye? We'll just cut through here to the Avenue, an' then it'll be
up ter you ter find the house."

"Oh, I can find the house," exulted Pollyanna, with all the confidence
of one who has reached familiar ground.

It was quite dark when Pollyanna led the way up the broad Carew steps.
The boy's ring at the bell was very quickly answered, and Pollyanna
found herself confronted by not only Mary, but by Mrs. Carew, Bridget,
and Jennie as well. All four of the women were white-faced and
anxious-eyed.

"Child, child, where HAVE you been?" demanded Mrs. Carew, hurrying
forward.

"Why, I--I just went to walk," began Pollyanna, "and I got lost, and
this boy--"

"Where did you find her?" cut in Mrs. Carew, turning imperiously to
Pollyanna's escort, who was, at the moment, gazing in frank admiration
at the wonders about him in the brilliantly-lighted hall.

"Where did you find her, boy?" she repeated sharply.

For a brief moment the boy met her gaze unflinchingly; then something
very like a twinkle came into his eyes, though his voice, when he
spoke, was gravity itself.

"Well, I found her 'round Bowdoin Square, but I reckon she'd been
doin' the North End, only she couldn't catch on ter the lingo of the
Dagos, so I don't think she give 'em the glad hand, ma'am."

"The North End--that child--alone! Pollyanna!" shuddered Mrs. Carew.

"Oh, I wasn't alone, Mrs. Carew," fended Pollyanna. "There were ever
and ever so many people there, weren't there, boy?"

But the boy, with an impish grin, was disappearing through the door.

Pollyanna learned many things during the next half-hour. She learned
that nice little girls do not take long walks alone in unfamiliar
cities, nor sit on park benches and talk to strangers. She learned,
also, that it was only by a "perfectly marvelous miracle" that she had
reached home at all that night, and that she had escaped many, many
very disagreeable consequences of her foolishness. She learned that
Boston was not Beldingsville, and that she must not think it was.

"But, Mrs. Carew," she finally argued despairingly, "I AM here, and I
didn't get lost for keeps. Seems as if I ought to be glad for that
instead of thinking all the time of the sorry things that might have
happened."

"Yes, yes, child, I suppose so, I suppose so," sighed Mrs. Carew; "but
you have given me such a fright, and I want you to be sure, SURE, SURE
never to do it again. Now come, dear, you must be hungry."

It was just as she was dropping off to sleep that night that Pollyanna
murmured drowsily to herself:

"The thing I'm the very sorriest for of anything is that I didn't ask
that boy his name nor where he lived. Now I can't ever say thank you
to him!"




CHAPTER VII

A NEW ACQUAINTANCE


Pollyanna's movements were most carefully watched over after her
adventurous walk; and, except to go to school, she was not allowed out
of the house unless Mary or Mrs. Carew herself accompanied her. This,
to Pollyanna, however, was no cross, for she loved both Mrs. Carew and
Mary, and delighted to be with them. They were, too, for a while, very
generous with their time. Even Mrs. Carew, in her terror of what might
have happened, and her relief that it had not happened, exerted
herself to entertain the child.

Thus it came about that, with Mrs. Carew, Pollyanna attended concerts
and matinees, and visited the Public Library and the Art Museum; and
with Mary she took the wonderful "seeing Boston" trips, and visited
the State House and the Old South Church.

Greatly as Pollyanna enjoyed the automobile, she enjoyed the trolley
cars more, as Mrs. Carew, much to her surprise, found out one day.

"Do we go in the trolley car?" Pollyanna asked eagerly.

"No. Perkins will take us," answered Mrs. Carew. Then, at the
unmistakable disappointment in Pollyanna's face, she added in
surprise: "Why, I thought you liked the auto, child!"

"Oh, I do," acceded Pollyanna, hurriedly; "and I wouldn't say
anything, anyway, because of course I know it's cheaper than the
trolley car, and--"

"'Cheaper than the trolley car'!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew, amazed into an
interruption.

"Why, yes," explained Pollyanna, with widening eyes; "the trolley car
costs five cents a person, you know, and the auto doesn't cost
anything, 'cause it's yours. And of course I LOVE the auto, anyway,"
she hurried on, before Mrs. Carew could speak. "It's only that there
are so many more people in the trolley car, and it's such fun to watch
them! Don't you think so?"

"Well, no, Pollyanna, I can't say that I do," responded Mrs. Carew,
dryly, as she turned away.

As it chanced, not two days later, Mrs. Carew heard something more of
Pollyanna and trolley cars--this time from Mary.

"I mean, it's queer, ma'am," explained Mary earnestly, in answer to a
question her mistress had asked, "it's queer how Miss Pollyanna just
gets 'round EVERYBODY--and without half trying. It isn't that she DOES
anything. She doesn't. She just--just looks glad, I guess, that's all.
But I've seen her get into a trolley car that was full of
cross-looking men and women, and whimpering children, and in five
minutes you wouldn't know the place. The men and women have stopped
scowling, and the children have forgot what they're cryin' for.

"Sometimes it's just somethin' that Miss Pollyanna has said to me, and
they've heard it. Sometimes it's just the 'Thank you,' she gives when
somebody insists on givin' us their seat--and they're always doin'
that--givin' us seats, I mean. And sometimes it's the way she smiles
at a baby or a dog. All dogs everywhere wag their tails at her,
anyway, and all babies, big and little, smile and reach out to her. If
we get held up it's a joke, and if we take the wrong car, it's the
funniest thing that ever happened. And that's the way 'tis about
everythin'. One just can't stay grumpy, with Miss Pollyanna, even if
you're only one of a trolley car full of folks that don't know her."

"Hm-m; very likely," murmured Mrs. Carew, turning away.

October proved to be, that year, a particularly warm, delightful
month, and as the golden days came and went, it was soon very evident
that to keep up with Pollyanna's eager little feet was a task which
would consume altogether too much of somebody's time and patience;
and, while Mrs. Carew had the one, she had not the other, neither had
she the willingness to allow Mary to spend quite so much of HER time
(whatever her patience might be) in dancing attendance to Pollyanna's
whims and fancies.

To keep the child indoors all through those glorious October
afternoons was, of course, out of the question. Thus it came about
that, before long, Pollyanna found herself once more in the "lovely
big yard"--the Boston Public Garden--and alone. Apparently she was as
free as before, but in reality she was surrounded by a high stone wall
of regulations.

She must not talk to strange men or women; she must not play with
strange children; and under no circumstances must she step foot
outside the Garden except to come home. Furthermore, Mary, who had
taken her to the Garden and left her, made very sure that she knew the
way home--that she knew just where Commonwealth Avenue came down to
Arlington Street across from the Garden. And always she must go home
when the clock in the church tower said it was half-past four.

Pollyanna went often to the Garden after this. Occasionally she went
with some of the girls from school. More often she went alone. In
spite of the somewhat irksome restrictions she enjoyed herself very
much. She could WATCH the people even if she could not talk to them;
and she could talk to the squirrels and pigeons and sparrows that so
eagerly came for the nuts and grain which she soon learned to carry to
them every time she went.

Pollyanna often looked for her old friends of that first day--the man
who was so glad he had his eyes and legs and arms, and the pretty
young lady who would not go with the handsome man; but she never saw
them. She did frequently see the boy in the wheel chair, and she
wished she could talk to him. The boy fed the birds and squirrels,
too, and they were so tame that the doves would perch on his head and
shoulders, and the squirrels would burrow in his pockets for nuts. But
Pollyanna, watching from a distance, always noticed one strange
circumstance: in spite of the boy's very evident delight in serving
his banquet, his supply of food always ran short almost at once; and
though he invariably looked fully as disappointed as did the squirrel
after a nutless burrowing, yet he never remedied the matter by
bringing more food the next day--which seemed most short-sighted to
Pollyanna.

When the boy was not playing with the birds and squirrels he was
reading--always reading. In his chair were usually two or three worn
books, and sometimes a magazine or two. He was nearly always to be
found in one especial place, and Pollyanna used to wonder how he got
there. Then, one unforgettable day, she found out. It was a school
holiday, and she had come to the Garden in the forenoon; and it was
soon after she reached the place that she saw him being wheeled along
one of the paths by a snub-nosed, sandy-haired boy. She gave a keen
glance into the sandy-haired boy's face, then ran toward him with a
glad little cry.

"Oh, you--you! I know you--even if I don't know your name. You found
me! Don't you remember? Oh, I'm so glad to see you! I've so wanted to
say thank you!"

"Gee, if it ain't the swell little lost kid of the AveNOO!" grinned
the boy. "Well, what do you know about that! Lost again?"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Pollyanna, dancing up and down on her toes in
irrepressible joy. "I can't get lost any more--I have to stay right
here. And I mustn't talk, you know. But I can to you, for I KNOW you;
and I can to him--after you introduce me," she finished, with a
beaming glance at the lame boy, and a hopeful pause.

The sandy-haired youth chuckled softly, and tapped the shoulder of the
boy in the chair.

"Listen ter that, will ye? Ain't that the real thing, now? Just you
wait while I introDOOCE ye!" And he struck a pompous attitude. "Madam,
this is me friend, Sir James, Lord of Murphy's Alley, and--" But the
boy in the chair interrupted him.

"Jerry, quit your nonsense!" he cried vexedly. Then to Pollyanna he
turned a glowing face. "I've seen you here lots of times before. I've
watched you feed the birds and squirrels--you always have such a lot
for them! And I think YOU like Sir Lancelot the best, too. Of course,
there's the Lady Rowena--but wasn't she rude to Guinevere
yesterday--snatching her dinner right away from her like that?"

Pollyanna blinked and frowned, looking from one to the other of the
boys in plain doubt. Jerry chuckled again. Then, with a final push he
wheeled the chair into its usual position, and turned to go. Over his
shoulder he called to Pollyanna:

"Say, kid, jest let me put ye wise ter somethin'. This chap ain't
drunk nor crazy. See? Them's jest names he's give his young friends
here,"--with a flourish of his arms toward the furred and feathered
creatures that were gathering from all directions. "An' they ain't
even names of FOLKS. They're just guys out of books. Are ye on? Yet
he'd ruther feed them than feed hisself. Ain't he the limit? Ta-ta,
Sir James," he added, with a grimace, to the boy in the chair. "Buck
up, now--nix on the no grub racket for you! See you later." And he was
gone.

Pollyanna was still blinking and frowning when the lame boy turned
with a smile.

"You mustn't mind Jerry. That's just his way. He'd cut off his right
hand for me--Jerry would; but he loves to tease. Where'd you see him?
Does he know you? He didn't tell me your name."

"I'm Pollyanna Whittier. I was lost and he found me and took me home,"
answered Pollyanna, still a little dazedly.

"I see. Just like him," nodded the boy. "Don't he tote me up here
every day?"

A quick sympathy came to Pollyanna's eyes.

"Can't you walk--at all--er--Sir J-James?"

The boy laughed gleefully.

"'Sir James,' indeed! That's only more of Jerry's nonsense. I ain't a
'Sir.'"

Pollyanna looked clearly disappointed.

"You aren't? Nor a--a lord, like he said?"

"I sure ain't."

"Oh, I hoped you were--like Little Lord Fauntleroy, you know,"
rejoined Pollyanna. "And--"

But the boy interrupted her with an eager:

"Do YOU know Little Lord Fauntleroy? And do you know about Sir
Lancelot, and the Holy Grail, and King Arthur and his Round Table, and
the Lady Rowena, and Ivanhoe, and all those? DO you?"

Pollyanna gave her head a dubious shake.

"Well, I'm afraid maybe I don't know ALL of 'em," she admitted. "Are
they all--in books?"

The boy nodded.

"I've got 'em here--some of 'em," he said. "I like to read 'em over
and over. There's always SOMETHING new in 'em. Besides, I hain't got
no others, anyway. These were father's. Here, you little rascal--quit
that!" he broke off in laughing reproof as a bushy-tailed squirrel
leaped to his lap and began to nose in his pockets. "Gorry, guess we'd
better give them their dinner or they'll be tryin' to eat us,"
chuckled the boy. "That's Sir Lancelot. He's always first, you know."

From somewhere the boy produced a small pasteboard box which he opened
guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were
watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of
wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir
Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair.
Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his
haunches five feet away. A third squirrel chattered noisily on a
neighboring tree-branch.

From the box the boy took a few nuts, a small roll, and a doughnut. At
the latter he looked longingly, hesitatingly.

"Did you--bring anything?" he asked then.

"Lots--in here," nodded Pollyanna, tapping the paper bag she carried.

"Oh, then perhaps I WILL eat it to-day," sighed the boy, dropping the
doughnut back into the box with an air of relief.

Pollyanna, on whom the significance of this action was quite lost,
thrust her fingers into her own bag, and the banquet was on.

It was a wonderful hour. To Pollyanna it was, in a way, the most
wonderful hour she had ever spent, for she had found some one who
could talk faster and longer than she could. This strange youth seemed
to have an inexhaustible fund of marvelous stories of brave knights
and fair ladies, of tournaments and battles. Moreover, so vividly did
he draw his pictures that Pollyanna saw with her own eyes the deeds of
valor, the knights in armor, and the fair ladies with their jeweled
gowns and tresses, even though she was really looking at a flock of
fluttering doves and sparrows and a group of frisking squirrels on a
wide sweep of sunlit grass.

[Illustration: "It was a wonderful hour"]

The Ladies' Aiders were forgotten. Even the glad game was not thought
of. Pollyanna, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes was trailing
down the golden ages led by a romance-fed boy who--though she did not
know it--was trying to crowd into this one short hour of congenial
companionship countless dreary days of loneliness and longing.

Not until the noon bells sent Pollyanna hurrying homeward did she
remember that she did not even yet know the boy's name.

"I only know it isn't 'Sir James,'" she sighed to herself, frowning
with vexation. "But never mind. I can ask him to-morrow."




CHAPTER VIII

JAMIE


Pollyanna did not see the boy "to-morrow." It rained, and she could
not go to the Garden at all. It rained the next day, too. Even on the
third day she did not see him, for, though the sun came out bright and
warm, and though she went very early in the afternoon to the Garden
and waited long, he did not come at all. But on the fourth day he was
there in his old place, and Pollyanna hastened forward with a joyous
greeting.

"Oh, I'm so glad, GLAD to see you! But where've you been? You weren't
here yesterday at all."

"I couldn't. The pain wouldn't let me come yesterday," explained the
lad, who was looking very white.

"The PAIN! Oh, does it--ache?" stammered Pollyanna, all sympathy at
once.

"Oh, yes, always," nodded the boy, with a cheerfully matter-of-fact
air. "Most generally I can stand it and come here just the same,
except when it gets TOO bad, same as 'twas yesterday. Then I can't."

"But how can you stand it--to have it ache--always?" gasped Pollyanna.

"Why, I have to," answered the boy, opening his eyes a little wider.
"Things that are so are SO, and they can't be any other way. So what's
the use thinking how they might be? Besides, the harder it aches one
day, the nicer 'tis to have it let-up the next."

"I know! That's like the ga--" began Pollyanna; but the boy
interrupted her.

"Did you bring a lot this time?" he asked anxiously. "Oh, I hope you
did! You see I couldn't bring them any to-day. Jerry couldn't spare
even a penny for peanuts this morning and there wasn't really enough
stuff in the box for me this noon."

Pollyanna looked shocked.

"You mean--that you didn't have enough to eat--yourself?--for YOUR
luncheon?"

"Sure!" smiled the boy. "But don't worry. Tisn't the first time--and
'twon't be the last. I'm used to it. Hi, there! here comes Sir
Lancelot."

Pollyanna, however, was not thinking of squirrels.

"And wasn't there any more at home?"

"Oh, no, there's NEVER any left at home," laughed the boy. "You see,
mumsey works out--stairs and washings--so she gets some of her feed in
them places, and Jerry picks his up where he can, except nights and
mornings; he gets it with us then--if we've got any."

Pollyanna looked still more shocked.

"But what do you do when you don't have anything to eat?"

"Go hungry, of course."

"But I never HEARD of anybody who didn't have ANYTHING to eat," gasped
Pollyanna. "Of course father and I were poor, and we had to eat beans
and fish balls when we wanted turkey. But we had SOMETHING. Why don't
you tell folks--all these folks everywhere, that live in these houses?"

"What's the use?"

"Why, they'd give you something, of course!"

The boy laughed once more, this time a little queerly.

"Guess again, kid. You've got another one coming. Nobody I know is
dishin' out roast beef and frosted cakes for the askin'. Besides, if
you didn't go hungry once in a while, you wouldn't know how good
'taters and milk can taste; and you wouldn't have so much to put in
your Jolly Book."

"Your WHAT?"

The boy gave an embarrassed laugh and grew suddenly red.

"Forget it! I didn't think, for a minute, but you was mumsey or
Jerry."

"But what IS your Jolly Book?" pleaded Pollyanna. "Please tell me. Are
there knights and lords and ladies in that?"

The boy shook his head. His eyes lost their laughter and grew dark and
fathomless.

"No; I wish't there was," he sighed wistfully. "But when you--you
can't even WALK, you can't fight battles and win trophies, and have
fair ladies hand you your sword, and bestow upon you the golden
guerdon." A sudden fire came to the boy's eyes. His chin lifted itself
as if in response to a bugle call. Then, as suddenly, the fire died,
and the boy fell back into his old listlessness.

"You just can't do nothin'," he resumed wearily, after a moment's
silence. "You just have to sit and think; and times like that your
THINK gets to be something awful. Mine did, anyhow. I wanted to go to
school and learn things--more things than just mumsey can teach me;
and I thought of that. I wanted to run and play ball with the other
boys; and I thought of that. I wanted to go out and sell papers with
Jerry; and I thought of that. I didn't want to be taken care of all my
life; and I thought of that."

"I know, oh, I know," breathed Pollyanna, with shining eyes. "Didn't I
lose MY legs for a while?"

"Did you? Then you do know, some. But you've got yours again. I
hain't, you know," sighed the boy, the shadow in his eyes deepening.

"But you haven't told me yet about--the Jolly Book," prompted
Pollyanna, after a minute.

The boy stirred and laughed shamefacedly.

"Well, you see, it ain't much, after all, except to me. YOU wouldn't
see much in it. I started it a year ago. I was feelin' 'specially bad
that day. Nothin' was right. For a while I grumped it out, just
thinkin'; and then I picked up one of father's books and tried to
read. And the first thing I see was this: I learned it afterwards, so
I can say it now.

  "'Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem;
  There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground
  But holds some joy, of silence or of sound.'

[Footnote: Blanchard. Lyric Offerings. Hidden Joys.]

"Well, I was mad. I wished I could put the guy that wrote that in my
place, and see what kind of joy he'd find in my 'leaves.' I was so mad
I made up my mind I'd prove he didn't know what he was talkin' about,
so I begun to hunt for 'em--the joys in my 'leaves,' you know. I took
a little old empty notebook that Jerry had given me, and I said to
myself that I'd write 'em down. Everythin' that had anythin' about it
that I liked I'd put down in the book. Then I'd just show how many
'joys' I had."

"Yes, yes!" cried Pollyanna, absorbedly, as the boy paused for breath.

"Well, I didn't expect to get many, but--do you know?--I got a lot.
There was somethin' about 'most everythin' that I liked a LITTLE, so
in it had to go. The very first one was the book itself--that I'd got
it, you know, to write in. Then somebody give me a flower in a pot,
and Jerry found a dandy book in the subway. After that it was really
fun to hunt 'em out--I'd find 'em in such queer places, sometimes.
Then one day Jerry got hold of the little notebook, and found out what
'twas. Then he give it its name--the Jolly Book. And--and that's all."

"All--ALL!" cried Pollyanna, delight and amazement struggling for the
mastery on her glowing little face. "Why, that's the game! You're
playing the glad game, and don't know it--only you're playing it ever
and ever so much better than I ever could! Why, I--I couldn't play it
at all, I'm afraid, if I--I didn't have enough to eat, and couldn't
ever walk, or anything," she choked.

"The game? What game? I don't know anything about any game," frowned
the boy.

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

"I know you don't--I know you don't, and that's why it's so perfectly
lovely, and so--so wonderful! But listen. I'll tell you what the game
is."

And she told him.

"Gee!" breathed the boy appreciatively, when she had finished. "Now
what do you think of that!"

"And here you are, playing MY game better than anybody I ever saw, and
I don't even know your name yet, nor anything!" exclaimed Pollyanna,
in almost awestruck tones. "But I want to;--I want to know
everything."

"Pooh! there's nothing to know," rejoined the boy, with a shrug.
"Besides, see, here's poor Sir Lancelot and all the rest, waiting for
their dinner," he finished.

"Dear me, so they are," sighed Pollyanna, glancing impatiently at the
fluttering and chattering creatures all about them. Recklessly she
turned her bag upside down and scattered her supplies to the four
winds. "There, now, that's done, and we can talk again," she rejoiced.
"And there's such a lot I want to know. First, please, what IS your
name? I only know it isn't 'Sir James.'"

The boy smiled.

"No, it isn't; but that's what Jerry 'most always calls me. Mumsey and
the rest call me 'Jamie.'"

"'JAMIE!'" Pollyanna caught her breath and held it suspended. A wild
hope had come to her eyes. It was followed almost instantly, however,
by fearful doubt.

"Does 'mumsey' mean--mother?"

"Sure!"

Pollyanna relaxed visibly. Her face fell. If this Jamie had a mother,
he could not, of course, be Mrs. Carew's Jamie, whose mother had died
long ago. Still, even as he was, he was wonderfully interesting.

"But where do you live?" she catechized eagerly. "Is there anybody
else in your family but your mother and--and Jerry? Do you always come
here every day? Where is your Jolly Book? Mayn't I see it? Don't the
doctors say you can ever walk again? And where was it you said you got
it?--this wheel chair, I mean."

The boy chuckled.

"Say, how many of them questions do you expect me to answer all at
once? I'll begin at the last one, anyhow, and work backwards, maybe,
if I don't forget what they be. I got this chair a year ago. Jerry
knew one of them fellers what writes for papers, you know, and he put
it in about me--how I couldn't ever walk, and all that, and--and the
Jolly Book, you see. The first thing I knew, a whole lot of men and
women come one day toting this chair, and said 'twas for me. That
they'd read all about me, and they wanted me to have it to remember
them by."

"My! how glad you must have been!"

"I was. It took a whole page of my Jolly Book to tell about that
chair."

"But can't you EVER walk again?" Pollyanna's eyes were blurred with
tears.

"It don't look like it. They said I couldn't."

"Oh, but that's what they said about me, and then they sent me to Dr.
Ames, and I stayed 'most a year; and HE made me walk. Maybe he could
YOU!"

The boy shook his head.

"He couldn't--you see; I couldn't go to him, anyway. 'Twould cost too
much. We'll just have to call it that I can't ever--walk again. But
never mind." The boy threw back his head impatiently. "I'm trying not
to THINK of that. You know what it is when--when your THINK gets to
going."

"Yes, yes, of course--and here I am talking about it!" cried
Pollyanna, penitently. "I SAID you knew how to play the game better
than I did, now. But go on. You haven't told me half, yet. Where do
you live? And is Jerry all the brothers and sisters you've got?"

A swift change came to the boy's face. His eyes glowed.

"Yes--and he ain't mine, really. He ain't any relation, nor mumsey
ain't, neither. And only think how good they've been to me!"

"What's that?" questioned Pollyanna, instantly on the alert. "Isn't
that--that 'mumsey' your mother at all?"

"No; and that's what makes--"

"And haven't you got any mother?" interrupted Pollyanna, in growing
excitement.

"No; I never remember any mother, and father died six years ago."

"How old were you?"

"I don't know. I was little. Mumsey says she guesses maybe I was about
six. That's when they took me, you see."

"And your name is Jamie?" Pollyanna was holding her breath.

"Why, yes, I told you that."

"And what's the other name?" Longingly, but fearfully, Pollyanna asked
this question.

"I don't know."

"YOU DON'T KNOW!"

"I don't remember. I was too little, I suppose. Even the Murphys don't
know. They never knew me as anything but Jamie."

A great disappointment came to Pollyanna's face, but almost
immediately a flash of thought drove the shadow away.

"Well, anyhow, if you don't know what your name is, you can't know it
isn't 'Kent'!" she exclaimed.

"'Kent'?" puzzled the boy.

"Yes," began Pollyanna, all excitement. "You see, there was a little
boy named Jamie Kent that--" She stopped abruptly and bit her lip. It
had occurred to Pollyanna that it would be kinder not to let this boy
know yet of her hope that he might be the lost Jamie. It would be
better that she make sure of it before raising any expectations,
otherwise she might be bringing him sorrow rather than joy. She had
not forgotten how disappointed Jimmy Bean had been when she had been
obliged to tell him that the Ladies' Aid did not want him, and again
when at first Mr. Pendleton had not wanted him, either. She was
determined that she would not make the same mistake a third time; so
very promptly now she assumed an air of elaborate indifference on this
most dangerous subject, as she said:

"But never mind about Jamie Kent. Tell me about yourself. I'm SO
interested!"

"There isn't anything to tell. I don't know anything nice," hesitated
the boy. "They said father was--was queer, and never talked. They
didn't even know his name. Everybody called him 'The Professor.'
Mumsey says he and I lived in a little back room on the top floor of
the house in Lowell where they used to live. They were poor then, but
they wasn't near so poor as they are now. Jerry's father was alive
them days, and had a job."

"Yes, yes, go on," prompted Pollyanna.

"Well, mumsey says my father was sick a lot, and he got queerer and
queerer, so that they had me downstairs with them a good deal. I could
walk then, a little, but my legs wasn't right. I played with Jerry,
and the little girl that died. Well, when father died there wasn't
anybody to take me, and some men were goin' to put me in an orphan
asylum; but mumsey says I took on so, and Jerry took on so, that they
said they'd keep me. And they did. The little girl had just died, and
they said I might take her place. And they've had me ever since. And I
fell and got worse, and they're awful poor now, too, besides Jerry's
father dyin'. But they've kept me. Now ain't that what you call bein'
pretty good to a feller?"

"Yes, oh, yes," cried Pollyanna. "But they'll get their reward--I know
they'll get their reward!" Pollyanna was quivering with delight now.
The last doubt had fled. She had found the lost Jamie. She was sure of
it. But not yet must she speak. First Mrs. Carew must see him.
Then--THEN--! Even Pollyanna's imagination failed when it came to
picturing the bliss in store for Mrs. Carew and Jamie at that glad
reunion.

She sprang lightly to her feet in utter disregard of Sir Lancelot who
had come back and was nosing in her lap for more nuts.

"I've got to go now, but I'll come again to-morrow. Maybe I'll have a
lady with me that you'll like to know. You'll be here to-morrow, won't
you?" she finished anxiously.

"Sure, if it's pleasant. Jerry totes me up here 'most every mornin'.
They fixed it so he could, you know; and I bring my dinner and stay
till four o'clock. Jerry's good to me--he is!"

"I know, I know," nodded Pollyanna. "And maybe you'll find somebody
else to be good to you, too," she caroled. With which cryptic
statement and a beaming smile, she was gone.




CHAPTER IX

PLANS AND PLOTTINGS


On the way home Pollyanna made joyous plans. To-morrow, in some way or
other, Mrs. Carew must be persuaded to go with her for a walk in the
Public Garden. Just how this was to be brought about Pollyanna did not
know; but brought about it must be.

To tell Mrs. Carew plainly that she had found Jamie, and wanted her to
go to see him, was out of the question. There was, of course, a bare
chance that this might not be her Jamie; and if it were not, and if
she had thus raised in Mrs. Carew false hopes, the result might be
disastrous. Pollyanna knew, from what Mary had told her, that twice
already Mrs. Carew had been made very ill by the great disappointment
of following alluring clues that had led to some boy very different
from her dead sister's son. So Pollyanna knew that she could not tell
Mrs. Carew why she wanted her to go to walk to-morrow in the Public
Garden. But there would be a way, declared Pollyanna to herself as she
happily hurried homeward.

Fate, however, as it happened, once more intervened in the shape of a
heavy rainstorm; and Pollyanna did not have to more than look out of
doors the next morning to realize that there would be no Public Garden
stroll that day. Worse yet, neither the next day nor the next saw the
clouds dispelled; and Pollyanna spent all three afternoons wandering
from window to window, peering up into the sky, and anxiously
demanding of every one: "DON'T you think it looks a LITTLE like
clearing up?"

So unusual was this behavior on the part of the cheery little girl,
and so irritating was the constant questioning, that at last Mrs.
Carew lost her patience.

"For pity's sake, child, what is the trouble?" she cried. "I never
knew you to fret so about the weather. Where's that wonderful glad
game of yours to-day?"

Pollyanna reddened and looked abashed.

"Dear me, I reckon maybe I did forget the game this time," she
admitted. "And of course there IS something about it I can be glad
for, if I'll only hunt for it. I can be glad that--that it will HAVE
to stop raining sometime 'cause God said he WOULDN'T send another
flood. But you see, I did so want it to be pleasant to-day."

"Why, especially?"

"Oh, I--I just wanted to go to walk in the Public Garden." Pollyanna
was trying hard to speak unconcernedly. "I--I thought maybe you'd like
to go with me, too." Outwardly Pollyanna was nonchalance itself.
Inwardly, however, she was aquiver with excitement and suspense.

"_I_ go to walk in the Public Garden?" queried Mrs. Carew, with brows
slightly uplifted. "Thank you, no, I'm afraid not," she smiled.

"Oh, but you--you wouldn't REFUSE!" faltered Pollyanna, in quick
panic.

"I have refused."

Pollyanna swallowed convulsively. She had grown really pale.

"But, Mrs. Carew, please, PLEASE don't say you WON'T go, when it gets
pleasant," she begged. "You see, for a--a special reason I wanted you
to go--with me--just this once."

Mrs. Carew frowned. She opened her lips to make the "no" more
decisive; but something in Pollyanna's pleading eyes must have changed
the words, for when they came they were a reluctant acquiescence.

"Well, well, child, have your own way. But if I promise to go, YOU
must promise not to go near the window for an hour, and not to ask
again to-day if I think it's going to clear up."

"Yes'm, I will--I mean, I won't," palpitated Pollyanna. Then, as a
pale shaft of light that was almost a sunbeam, came aslant through the
window, she cried joyously: "But you DO think it IS going to--Oh!" she
broke off in dismay, and ran from the room.

Unmistakably it "cleared up" the next morning. But, though the sun
shone brightly, there was a sharp chill in the air, and by afternoon,
when Pollyanna came home from school, there was a brisk wind. In spite
of protests, however, she insisted that it was a beautiful day out,
and that she should be perfectly miserable if Mrs. Carew would not
come for a walk in the Public Garden. And Mrs. Carew went, though
still protesting.

As might have been expected, it was a fruitless journey. Together the
impatient woman and the anxious-eyed little girl hurried shiveringly
up one path and down another. (Pollyanna, not finding the boy in his
accustomed place, was making frantic search in every nook and corner
of the Garden. To Pollyanna it seemed that she could not have it so.
Here she was in the Garden, and here with her was Mrs. Carew; but not
anywhere to be found was Jamie--and yet not one word could she say to
Mrs. Carew.) At last, thoroughly chilled and exasperated, Mrs. Carew
insisted on going home; and despairingly Pollyanna went.

Sorry days came to Pollyanna then. What to her was perilously near a
second deluge--but according to Mrs. Carew was merely "the usual fall
rains"--brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled
with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady
downpour. If perchance occasionally there came a day of sunshine,
Pollyanna always flew to the Garden; but in vain. Jamie was never
there. It was the middle of November now, and even the Garden itself
was full of dreariness. The trees were bare, the benches almost empty,
and not one boat was on the little pond. True, the squirrels and
pigeons were there, and the sparrows were as pert as ever, but to feed
them was almost more of a sorrow than a joy, for every saucy switch of
Sir Lancelot's feathery tail but brought bitter memories of the lad
who had given him his name--and who was not there.

"And to think I didn't find out where he lived!" mourned Pollyanna to
herself over and over again, as the days passed. "And he was Jamie--I
just know he was Jamie. And now I'll have to wait and wait till spring
comes, and it's warm enough for him to come here again. And then,
maybe, _I_ sha'n't be coming here by that time. O dear, O dear--and he
WAS Jamie, I know he was Jamie!"

Then, one dreary afternoon, the unexpected happened. Pollyanna,
passing through the upper hallway heard angry voices in the hall
below, one of which she recognized as being Mary's, while the
other--the other--

The other voice was saying:

"Not on yer life! It's nix on the beggin' business. Do yer get me? I
wants ter see the kid, Pollyanna. I got a message for her from--from
Sir James. Now beat it, will ye, and trot out the kid, if ye don't
mind."

With a glad little cry Pollyanna turned and fairly flew down the
stairway.

"Oh, I'm here, I'm here, I'm right here!" she panted, stumbling
forward. "What is it? Did Jamie send you?"

In her excitement she had almost flung herself with outstretched arms
upon the boy when Mary intercepted a shocked, restraining hand.

"Miss Pollyanna, Miss Pollyanna, do you mean to say you know
this--this beggar boy?"

The boy flushed angrily; but before he could speak Pollyanna
interposed valiant championship.

"He isn't a beggar boy. He belongs to one of my very best friends.
Besides, he's the one that found me and brought me home that time I
was lost." Then to the boy she turned with impetuous questioning.
"What is it? Did Jamie send you?"

"Sure he did. He hit the hay a month ago, and he hain't been up
since."

"He hit--what?" puzzled Pollyanna.

"Hit the hay--went ter bed. He's sick, I mean, and he wants ter see
ye. Will ye come?"

"Sick? Oh, I'm so sorry!" grieved Pollyanna. "Of course I'll come.
I'll go get my hat and coat right away."

"Miss Pollyanna!" gasped Mary in stern disapproval. "As if Mrs. Carew
would let you go--ANYWHERE with a strange boy like this!"

"But he isn't a strange boy," objected Pollyanna. "I've known him ever
so long, and I MUST go. I--"

"What in the world is the meaning of this?" demanded Mrs. Carew icily
from the drawing-room doorway. "Pollyanna, who is this boy, and what
is he doing here?"

Pollyanna turned with a quick cry.

"Oh, Mrs. Carew, you'll let me go, won't you?"

"Go where?"

"To see my brother, ma'am," cut in the boy hurriedly, and with an
obvious effort to be very polite. "He's sort of off his feed, ye know,
and he wouldn't give me no peace till I come up--after her," with an
awkward gesture toward Pollyanna. "He thinks a sight an' all of her."

"I may go, mayn't I?" pleaded Pollyanna.

Mrs. Carew frowned.

"Go with this boy--YOU? Certainly not, Pollyanna! I wonder you are
wild enough to think of it for a moment."

"Oh, but I want you to come, too," began Pollyanna.

"I? Absurd, child! That is impossible. You may give this boy here a
little money, if you like, but--"

"Thank ye, ma'am, but I didn't come for money," resented the boy, his
eyes flashing. "I come for--her."

"Yes, and Mrs. Carew, it's Jerry--Jerry Murphy, the boy that found me
when I was lost, and brought me home," appealed Pollyanna. "NOW won't
you let me go?"

Mrs. Carew shook her head.

"It is out of the question, Pollyanna."

"But he says Ja-- --the other boy is sick, and wants me!"

"I can't help that."

"And I know him real well, Mrs. Carew. I do, truly. He reads
books--lovely books, all full of knights and lords and ladies, and he
feeds the birds and squirrels and gives 'em names, and everything. And
he can't walk, and he doesn't have enough to eat, lots of days,"
panted Pollyanna; "and he's been playing my glad game for a year, and
didn't know it. And he plays it ever and ever so much better than I
do. And I've hunted and hunted for him, ever and ever so many days.
Honest and truly, Mrs. Carew, I've just GOT to see him," almost sobbed
Pollyanna. "I can't lose him again!"

An angry color flamed into Mrs. Carew's cheeks.

"Pollyanna, this is sheer nonsense. I am surprised. I am amazed at you
for insisting upon doing something you know I disapprove of. I CAN NOT
allow you to go with this boy. Now please let me hear no more about
it."

A new expression came to Pollyanna's face. With a look half-terrified,
half-exalted, she lifted her chin and squarely faced Mrs. Carew.
Tremulously, but determinedly, she spoke.

"Then I'll have to tell you. I didn't mean to--till I was sure. I
wanted you to see him first. But now I've got to tell. I can't lose
him again. I think, Mrs. Carew, he's--Jamie."

"Jamie! Not--my--Jamie!" Mrs. Carew's face had grown very white.

"Yes."

"Impossible!"

"I know; but, please, his name IS Jamie, and he doesn't know the other
one. His father died when he was six years old, and he can't remember
his mother. He's twelve years old, he thinks. These folks took him in
when his father died, and his father was queer, and didn't tell folks
his name, and--"

But Mrs. Carew had stopped her with a gesture. Mrs. Carew was even
whiter than before, but her eyes burned with a sudden fire.

"We'll go at once," she said. "Mary, tell Perkins to have the car here
as soon as possible. Pollyanna, get your hat and coat. Boy, wait here,
please. We'll be ready to go with you immediately." The next minute
she had hurried up-stairs.

In the hall the boy drew a long breath.

"Gee whiz!" he muttered softly. "If we ain't goin' ter go in a
buzz-wagon! Some class ter that! Gorry! what'll Sir James say?"




CHAPTER X

IN MURPHY'S ALLEY


With the opulent purr that seems to be peculiar to luxurious
limousines, Mrs. Carew's car rolled down Commonwealth Avenue and out
upon Arlington Street to Charles. Inside sat a shining-eyed little
girl and a white-faced, tense woman. Outside, to give directions to
the plainly disapproving chauffeur, sat Jerry Murphy, inordinately
proud and insufferably important.

When the limousine came to a stop before a shabby doorway in a narrow,
dirty alley, the boy leaped to the ground, and, with a ridiculous
imitation of the liveried pomposities he had so often watched, threw
open the door of the car and stood waiting for the ladies to alight.

Pollyanna sprang out at once, her eyes widening with amazement and
distress as she looked about her. Behind her came Mrs. Carew, visibly
shuddering as her gaze swept the filth, the sordidness, and the ragged
children that swarmed shrieking and chattering out of the dismal
tenements, and surrounded the car in a second.

Jerry waved his arms angrily.

"Here, you, beat it!" he yelled to the motley throng. "This ain't no
free movies! CAN that racket and get a move on ye. Lively, now! We
gotta get by. Jamie's got comp'ny."

Mrs. Carew shuddered again, and laid a trembling hand on Jerry's
shoulder.

"Not--HERE!" she recoiled.

But the boy did not hear. With shoves and pushes from sturdy fists and
elbows, he was making a path for his charges; and before Mrs. Carew
knew quite how it was done, she found herself with the boy and
Pollyanna at the foot of a rickety flight of stairs in a dim,
evil-smelling hallway.

Once more she put out a shaking hand.

"Wait," she commanded huskily. "Remember! Don't either of you say a
word about--about his being possibly the boy I'm looking for. I must
see for myself first, and--question him."

"Of course!" agreed Pollyanna.

"Sure! I'm on," nodded the boy. "I gotta go right off anyhow, so I
won't bother ye none. Now toddle easy up these 'ere stairs. There's
always holes, and most generally there's a kid or two asleep
somewheres. An' the elevator ain't runnin' ter-day," he gibed
cheerfully. "We gotta go ter the top, too!"

Mrs. Carew found the "holes"--broken boards that creaked and bent
fearsomely under her shrinking feet; and she found one "kid"--a
two-year-old baby playing with an empty tin can on a string which he
was banging up and down the second flight of stairs. On all sides
doors were opened, now boldly, now stealthily, but always disclosing
women with tousled heads or peering children with dirty faces.
Somewhere a baby was wailing piteously. Somewhere else a man was
cursing. Everywhere was the smell of bad whiskey, stale cabbage, and
unwashed humanity.

At the top of the third and last stairway the boy came to a pause
before a closed door.

"I'm just a-thinkin' what Sir James'll say when he's wise ter the
prize package I'm bringin' him," he whispered in a throaty voice. "I
know what mumsey'll do--she'll turn on the weeps in no time ter see
Jamie so tickled." The next moment he threw wide the door with a gay:
"Here we be--an' we come in a buzz-wagon! Ain't that goin' some, Sir
James?"

It was a tiny room, cold and cheerless and pitifully bare, but
scrupulously neat. There were here no tousled heads, no peering
children, no odors of whiskey, cabbage, and unclean humanity. There
were two beds, three broken chairs, a dry-goods-box table, and a stove
with a faint glow of light that told of a fire not nearly brisk enough
to heat even that tiny room. On one of the beds lay a lad with flushed
cheeks and fever-bright eyes. Near him sat a thin, white-faced woman,
bent and twisted with rheumatism.

Mrs. Carew stepped into the room and, as if to steady herself, paused
a minute with her back to the wall. Pollyanna hurried forward with a
low cry just as Jerry, with an apologetic "I gotta go now; good-by!"
dashed through the door.

"Oh, Jamie, I'm so glad I've found you," cried Pollyanna. "You don't
know how I've looked and looked for you every day. But I'm so sorry
you're sick!"

Jamie smiled radiantly and held out a thin white hand.

"I ain't sorry--I'm GLAD," he emphasized meaningly; "'cause it's
brought you to see me. Besides, I'm better now, anyway. Mumsey, this
is the little girl, you know, that told me the glad game--and mumsey's
playing it, too," he triumphed, turning back to Pollyanna. "First she
cried 'cause her back hurts too bad to let her work; then when I was
took worse she was GLAD she couldn't work, 'cause she could be here to
take care of me, you know."

At that moment Mrs. Carew hurried forward, her eyes half-fearfully,
half-longingly on the face of the lame boy in the bed.

"It's Mrs. Carew. I've brought her to see you, Jamie," introduced
Pollyanna, in a tremulous voice.

The little twisted woman by the bed had struggled to her feet by this
time, and was nervously offering her chair. Mrs. Carew accepted it
without so much as a glance. Her eyes were still on the boy in the
bed.

"Your name is--Jamie?" she asked, with visible difficulty.

"Yes, ma'am." The boy's bright eyes looked straight into hers.

"What is your other name?"

"I don't know."

"He is not your son?" For the first time Mrs. Carew turned to the
twisted little woman who was still standing by the bed.

"No, madam."

"And you don't know his name?"

"No, madam. I never knew it."

With a despairing gesture Mrs. Carew turned back to the boy.

"But think, think--don't you remember ANYTHING of your name
but--Jamie?"

The boy shook his head. Into his eyes was coming a puzzled wonder.

"No, nothing."

"Haven't you anything that belonged to your father, with possibly his
name in it?"

"There wasn't anythin' worth savin' but them books," interposed Mrs.
Murphy. "Them's his. Maybe you'd like to look at 'em," she suggested,
pointing to a row of worn volumes on a shelf across the room. Then, in
plainly uncontrollable curiosity, she asked: "Was you thinkin' you
knew him, ma'am?"

"I don't know," murmured Mrs. Carew, in a half-stifled voice, as she
rose to her feet and crossed the room to the shelf of books.

There were not many--perhaps ten or a dozen. There was a volume of
Shakespeare's plays, an "Ivanhoe," a much-thumbed "Lady of the Lake,"
a book of miscellaneous poems, a coverless "Tennyson," a dilapidated
"Little Lord Fauntleroy," and two or three books of ancient and
medieval history. But, though Mrs. Carew looked carefully through
every one, she found nowhere any written word. With a despairing sigh
she turned back to the boy and to the woman, both of whom now were
watching her with startled, questioning eyes.

"I wish you'd tell me--both of you--all you know about yourselves,"
she said brokenly, dropping herself once more into the chair by the
bed.

And they told her. It was much the same story that Jamie had told
Pollyanna in the Public Garden. There was little that was new, nothing
that was significant, in spite of the probing questions that Mrs.
Carew asked. At its conclusion Jamie turned eager eyes on Mrs. Carew's
face.

"Do you think you knew--my father?" he begged.

Mrs. Carew closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her head.

"I don't--know," she answered. "But I think--not."

Pollyanna gave a quick cry of keen disappointment, but as quickly she
suppressed it in obedience to Mrs. Carew's warning glance. With new
horror, however, she surveyed the tiny room.

Jamie, turning his wondering eyes from Mrs. Carew's face, suddenly
awoke to his duties as host.

"Wasn't you good to come!" he said to Pollyanna, gratefully. "How's
Sir Lancelot? Do you ever go to feed him now?" Then, as Pollyanna did
not answer at once, he hurried on, his eyes going from her face to the
somewhat battered pink in a broken-necked bottle in the window. "Did
you see my posy? Jerry found it. Somebody dropped it and he picked it
up. Ain't it pretty? And it SMELLS a little."

But Pollyanna did not seem even to have heard him. She was still
gazing, wide-eyed about the room, clasping and unclasping her hands
nervously.

"But I don't see how you can ever play the game here at all, Jamie,"
she faltered. "I didn't suppose there could be anywhere such a
perfectly awful place to live," she shuddered.

"Ho!" scoffed Jamie, valiantly. "You'd oughter see the Pikes'
down-stairs. Theirs is a whole lot worse'n this. You don't know what a
lot of nice things there is about this room. Why, we get the sun in
that winder there for 'most two hours every day, when it shines. And
if you get real near it you can see a whole lot of sky from it. If we
could only KEEP the room!--but you see we've got to leave, we're
afraid. And that's what's worrin' us."

"Leave!"

"Yes. We got behind on the rent--mumsey bein' sick so, and not earnin'
anythin'." In spite of a courageously cheerful smile, Jamie's voice
shook. "Mis' Dolan down-stairs--the woman what keeps my wheel chair
for me, you know--is helpin' us out this week. But of course she can't
do it always, and then we'll have to go--if Jerry don't strike it
rich, or somethin'."

"Oh, but can't we--" began Pollyanna.

She stopped short. Mrs. Carew had risen to her feet abruptly with a
hurried:

"Come, Pollyanna, we must go." Then to the woman she turned wearily.
"You won't have to leave. I'll send you money and food at once, and
I'll mention your case to one of the charity organizations in which I
am interested, and they will--"

In surprise she ceased speaking. The bent little figure of the woman
opposite had drawn itself almost erect. Mrs. Murphy's cheeks were
flushed. Her eyes showed a smouldering fire.

"Thank you, no, Mrs. Carew," she said tremulously, but proudly. "We're
poor--God knows; but we ain't charity folks."

"Nonsense!" cried Mrs. Carew, sharply. "You're letting the woman
down-stairs help you. This boy said so."

"I know; but that ain't charity," persisted the woman, still
tremulously. "Mrs. Dolan is my FRIEND. She knows I'D do HER a good
turn just as quick--I have done 'em for her in times past. Help from
FRIENDS ain't charity. They CARE; and that--that makes a difference.
We wa'n't always as we are now, you see; and that makes it hurt all
the more--all this. Thank you; but we couldn't take--your money."

Mrs. Carew frowned angrily. It had been a most disappointing,
heart-breaking, exhausting hour for her. Never a patient woman, she
was exasperated now, besides being utterly tired out.

"Very well, just as you please," she said coldly. Then, with vague
irritation she added: "But why don't you go to your landlord and
insist that he make you even decently comfortable while you do stay?
Surely you're entitled to something besides broken windows stuffed
with rags and papers! And those stairs that I came up are positively
dangerous."

Mrs. Murphy sighed in a discouraged way. Her twisted little figure had
fallen back into its old hopelessness.

"We have tried to have something done, but it's never amounted to
anything. We never see anybody but the agent, of course; and he says
the rents are too low for the owner to put out any more money on
repairs."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mrs. Carew, with all the sharpness of a nervous,
distraught woman who has at last found an outlet for her exasperation.
"It's shameful! What's more, I think it's a clear case of violation of
the law;--those stairs are, certainly. I shall make it my business to
see that he's brought to terms. What is the name of that agent, and
who is the owner of this delectable establishment?"

"I don't know the name of the owner, madam; but the agent is Mr.
Dodge."

"Dodge!" Mrs. Carew turned sharply, an odd look on her face. "You
don't mean--Henry Dodge?"

"Yes, madam. His name is Henry, I think."

A flood of color swept into Mrs. Carew's face, then receded, leaving
it whiter than before.

"Very well, I--I'll attend to it," she murmured, in a half-stifled
voice, turning away. "Come, Pollyanna, we must go now."

Over at the bed Pollyanna was bidding Jamie a tearful good-by.

"But I'll come again. I'll come real soon," she promised brightly, as
she hurried through the door after Mrs. Carew.

Not until they had picked their precarious way down the three long
flights of stairs and through the jabbering, gesticulating crowd of
men, women, and children that surrounded the scowling Perkins and the
limousine, did Pollyanna speak again. But then she scarcely waited for
the irate chauffeur to slam the door upon them before she pleaded:

"Dear Mrs. Carew, please, please say that it was Jamie! Oh, it would
be so nice for him to be Jamie."

"But he isn't Jamie!"

"O dear! Are you sure?"

There was a moment's pause, then Mrs. Carew covered her face with her
hands.

"No, I'm not sure--and that's the tragedy of it," she moaned. "I don't
think he is; I'm almost positive he isn't. But, of course, there IS a
chance--and that's what's killing me."

"Then can't you just THINK he's Jamie," begged Pollyanna, "and play he
was? Then you could take him home, and--" But Mrs. Carew turned
fiercely.

"Take that boy into my home when he WASN'T Jamie? Never, Pollyanna! I
couldn't."

"But if you CAN'T help Jamie, I should think you'd be so glad there
was some one like him you COULD help," urged Pollyanna, tremulously.
"What if your Jamie was like this Jamie, all poor and sick, wouldn't
you want some one to take him in and comfort him, and--"
"Don't--don't, Pollyanna," moaned Mrs. Carew, turning her head from
side to side, in a frenzy of grief. "When I think that maybe,
somewhere, our Jamie is like that--" Only a choking sob finished the
sentence.

"That's just what I mean--that's just what I mean!" triumphed
Pollyanna, excitedly. "Don't you see? If this IS your Jamie, of course
you'll want him; and if it isn't, you couldn't be doing any harm to
the other Jamie by taking this one, and you'd do a whole lot of good,
for you'd make this one so happy--so happy! And then, by and by, if
you should find the real Jamie, you wouldn't have lost anything, but
you'd have made two little boys happy instead of one; and--" But again
Mrs. Carew interrupted her.

"Don't, Pollyanna, don't! I want to think--I want to think."

Tearfully Pollyanna sat back in her seat. By a very visible effort she
kept still for one whole minute. Then, as if the words fairly bubbled
forth of themselves, there came this:

"Oh, but what an awful, awful place that was! I just wish the man that
owned it had to live in it himself--and then see what he'd have to be
glad for!"

Mrs. Carew sat suddenly erect. Her face showed a curious change.
Almost as if in appeal she flung out her hand toward Pollyanna.

"Don't!" she cried. "Perhaps--she didn't know, Pollyanna. Perhaps she
didn't know. I'm sure she didn't know--she owned a place like that.
But it will be fixed now--it will be fixed."

"SHE! Is it a woman that owns it, and do you know her? And do you know
the agent, too?"

"Yes." Mrs. Carew bit her lips. "I know her, and I know the agent."

"Oh, I'm so glad," sighed Pollyanna. "Then it'll be all right now."

"Well, it certainly will be--better," avowed Mrs. Carew with emphasis,
as the car stopped before her own door.

Mrs. Carew spoke as if she knew what she was talking about. And
perhaps, indeed, she did--better than she cared to tell Pollyanna.
Certainly, before she slept that night, a letter left her hands
addressed to one Henry Dodge, summoning him to an immediate conference
as to certain changes and repairs to be made at once in tenements she
owned. There were, moreover, several scathing sentences concerning
"rag-stuffed windows," and "rickety stairways," that caused this same
Henry Dodge to scowl angrily, and to say a sharp word behind his
teeth--though at the same time he paled with something very like fear.




CHAPTER XI

A SURPRISE FOR MRS. CAREW


The matter of repairs and improvements having been properly and
efficiently attended to, Mrs. Carew told herself that she had done her
duty, and that the matter was closed. She would forget it. The boy was
not Jamie--he could not be Jamie. That ignorant, sickly, crippled boy
her dead sister's son? Impossible! She would cast the whole thing from
her thoughts.

It was just here, however, that Mrs. Carew found herself against an
immovable, impassable barrier: the whole thing refused to be cast from
her thoughts. Always before her eyes was the picture of that bare
little room and the wistful-faced boy. Always in her ears was that
heartbreaking "What if it WERE Jamie?" And always, too, there was
Pollyanna; for even though Mrs. Carew might (as she did) silence the
pleadings and questionings of the little girl's tongue, there was no
getting away from the prayers and reproaches of the little girl's
eyes.

Twice again in desperation Mrs. Carew went to see the boy, telling
herself each time that only another visit was needed to convince her
that the boy was not the one she sought. But, even though while there
in the boy's presence, she told herself that she WAS convinced, once
away from it, the old, old questioning returned. At last, in still
greater desperation, she wrote to her sister, and told her the whole
story.

"I had not meant to tell you," she wrote, after she had stated the
bare facts of the case. "I thought it a pity to harrow you up, or to
raise false hopes. I am so sure it is not he--and yet, even as I write
these words, I know I am NOT sure. That is why I want you to come--why
you must come. I must have you see him.

"I wonder--oh, I wonder what you'll say! Of course we haven't seen our
Jamie since he was four years old. He would be twelve now. This boy is
twelve, I should judge. (He doesn't know his age.) He has hair and
eyes not unlike our Jamie's. He is crippled, but that condition came
upon him through a fall, six years ago, and was made worse through
another one four years later. Anything like a complete description of
his father's appearance seems impossible to obtain; but what I have
learned contains nothing conclusive either for or against his being
poor Doris's husband. He was called 'the Professor,' was very queer,
and seemed to own nothing save a few books. This might, or might not
signify. John Kent was certainly always queer, and a good deal of a
Bohemian in his tastes. Whether he cared for books or not I don't
remember. Do you? And of course the title 'Professor' might easily
have been assumed, if he wished, or it might have been merely given
him by others. As for this boy--I don't know, I don't know--but I do
hope YOU will!

                                    "Your distracted sister,

                                    "RUTH."

Della came at once, and she went immediately to see the boy; but she
did not "know." Like her sister, she said she did not think it was
their Jamie, but at the same time there was that chance--it might be
he, after all. Like Pollyanna, however, she had what she thought was a
very satisfactory way out of the dilemma.

"But why don't you take him, dear?" she proposed to her sister. "Why
don't you take him and adopt him? It would be lovely for him--poor
little fellow--and--" But Mrs. Carew shuddered and would not even let
her finish.

"No, no, I can't, I can't!" she moaned. "I want my Jamie, my own
Jamie--or no one." And with a sigh Della gave it up and went back to
her nursing.

If Mrs. Carew thought that this closed the matter, however, she was
again mistaken; for her days were still restless, and her nights were
still either sleepless or filled with dreams of a "may be" or a "might
be" masquerading as an "it is so." She was, moreover, having a
difficult time with Pollyanna.

Pollyanna was puzzled. She was filled with questionings and unrest.
For the first time in her life Pollyanna had come face to face with
real poverty. She knew people who did not have enough to eat, who wore
ragged clothing, and who lived in dark, dirty, and very tiny rooms.
Her first impulse, of course, had been "to help." With Mrs. Carew she
made two visits to Jamie, and greatly did she rejoice at the changed
conditions she found there after "that man Dodge" had "tended to
things." But this, to Pollyanna, was a mere drop in the bucket. There
were yet all those other sick-looking men, unhappy-looking women, and
ragged children out in the street--Jamie's neighbors. Confidently she
looked to Mrs. Carew for help for them, also.

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew, when she learned what was expected of
her, "so you want the whole street to be supplied with fresh paper,
paint, and new stairways, do you? Pray, is there anything else you'd
like?"

"Oh, yes, lots of things," sighed Pollyanna, happily. "You see, there
are so many things they need--all of them! And what fun it will be to
get them! How I wish I was rich so I could help, too; but I'm 'most as
glad to be with you when you get them."

Mrs. Carew quite gasped aloud in her amazement. She lost no
time--though she did lose not a little patience--in explaining that
she had no intention of doing anything further in "Murphy's Alley,"
and that there was no reason why she should. No one would expect her
to. She had canceled all possible obligations, and had even been
really very generous, any one would say, in what she had done for the
tenement where lived Jamie and the Murphys. (That she owned the
tenement building she did not think it necessary to state.) At some
length she explained to Pollyanna that there were charitable
institutions, both numerous and efficient, whose business it was to
aid all the worthy poor, and that to these institutions she gave
frequently and liberally.

Even then, however, Pollyanna was not convinced.

"But I don't see," she argued, "why it's any better, or even so nice,
for a whole lot of folks to club together and do what everybody would
like to do for themselves. I'm sure I'd much rather give Jamie a--a
nice book, now, than to have some old Society do it; and I KNOW he'd
like better to have me do it, too."

"Very likely," returned Mrs. Carew, with some weariness and a little
exasperation. "But it is just possible that it would not be so well
for Jamie as--as if that book were given by a body of people who knew
what sort of one to select."

This led her to say much, also (none of which Pollyanna in the least
understood), about "pauperizing the poor," the "evils of
indiscriminate giving," and the "pernicious effect of unorganized
charity."

"Besides," she added, in answer to the still perplexed expression on
Pollyanna's worried little face, "very likely if I offered help to
these people they would not take it. You remember Mrs. Murphy
declined, at the first, to let me send food and clothing--though they
accepted it readily enough from their neighbors on the first floor, it
seems."

"Yes, I know," sighed Pollyanna, turning away. "There's something
there somehow that I don't understand. But it doesn't seem right that
WE should have such a lot of nice things, and that THEY shouldn't have
anything, hardly."

As the days passed, this feeling on the part of Pollyanna increased
rather than diminished; and the questions she asked and the comments
she made were anything but a relief to the state of mind in which Mrs.
Carew herself was. Even the test of the glad game, in this case,
Pollyanna was finding to be very near a failure; for, as she expressed
it:

"I don't see how you can find anything about this poor-people business
to be glad for. Of course we can be glad for ourselves that we aren't
poor like them; but whenever I'm thinking how glad I am for that, I
get so sorry for them that I CAN'T be glad any longer. Of course we
COULD be glad there were poor folks, because we could help them. But
if we DON'T help them, where's the glad part of that coming in?" And
to this Pollyanna could find no one who could give her a satisfactory
answer.

Especially she asked this question of Mrs. Carew; and Mrs. Carew,
still haunted by the visions of the Jamie that was, and the Jamie that
might be, grew only more restless, more wretched, and more utterly
despairing. Nor was she helped any by the approach of Christmas.
Nowhere was there glow of holly or flash of tinsel that did not carry
its pang to her; for always to Mrs. Carew it but symbolized a child's
empty stocking--a stocking that might be--Jamie's.

Finally, a week before Christmas, she fought what she thought was the
last battle with herself. Resolutely, but with no real joy in her
face, she gave terse orders to Mary, and summoned Pollyanna.

"Pollyanna," she began, almost harshly, "I have decided to--to take
Jamie. The car will be here at once. I'm going after him now, and
bring him home. You may come with me if you like."

A great light transfigured Pollyanna's face.

"Oh, oh, oh, how glad I am!" she breathed. "Why, I'm so glad I--I want
to cry! Mrs. Carew, why is it, when you're the very gladdest of
anything, you always want to cry?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, Pollyanna," rejoined Mrs. Carew,
abstractedly. On Mrs. Carew's face there was still no look of joy.

Once in the Murphys' little one-room tenement, it did not take Mrs.
Carew long to tell her errand. In a few short sentences she told the
story of the lost Jamie, and of her first hopes that this Jamie might
be he. She made no secret of her doubts that he was the one; at the
same time, she said she had decided to take him home with her and give
him every possible advantage. Then, a little wearily, she told what
were the plans she had made for him.

At the foot of the bed Mrs. Murphy listened, crying softly. Across the
room Jerry Murphy, his eyes dilating, emitted an occasional low "Gee!
Can ye beat that, now?" As to Jamie--Jamie, on the bed, had listened
at first with the air of one to whom suddenly a door has opened into a
longed-for paradise; but gradually, as Mrs. Carew talked, a new look
came to his eyes. Very slowly he closed them, and turned away his
face.

When Mrs. Carew ceased speaking there was a long silence before Jamie
turned his head and answered. They saw then that his face was very
white, and that his eyes were full of tears.

"Thank you, Mrs. Carew, but--I can't go," he said simply.

"You can't--what?" cried Mrs. Carew, as if she doubted the evidence of
her own ears.

"Jamie!" gasped Pollyanna.

"Oh, come, kid, what's eatin' ye?" scowled Jerry, hurriedly coming
forward. "Don't ye know a good thing when ye see it?"

"Yes; but I can't--go," said the crippled boy, again.

"But, Jamie, Jamie, think, THINK what it would mean to you!" quavered
Mrs. Murphy, at the foot of the bed.

"I am a-thinkin'," choked Jamie. "Don't you suppose I know what I'm
doin'--what I'm givin' up?" Then to Mrs. Carew he turned tear-wet
eyes. "I can't," he faltered. "I can't let you do all that for me. If
you--CARED it would be different. But you don't care--not really. You
don't WANT me--not ME. You want the real Jamie, and I ain't the real
Jamie. You don't think I am. I can see it in your face."

"I know. But--but--" began Mrs. Carew, helplessly.

"And it isn't as if--as if I was like other boys, and could walk,
either," interrupted the cripple, feverishly. "You'd get tired of me
in no time. And I'd see it comin'. I couldn't stand it--to be a burden
like that. Of course, if you CARED--like mumsey here--" He threw out
his hand, choked back a sob, then turned his head away again. "I'm not
the Jamie you want. I--can't--go," he said. With the words his thin,
boyish hand fell clenched till the knuckles showed white against the
tattered old shawl that covered the bed.

There was a moment's breathless hush, then, very quietly, Mrs. Carew
got to her feet. Her face was colorless; but there was that in it that
silenced the sob that rose to Pollyanna's lips.

"Come, Pollyanna," was all she said.

"Well, if you ain't the fool limit!" babbled Jerry Murphy to the boy
on the bed, as the door closed a moment later.

But the boy on the bed was crying very much as if the closing door had
been the one that had led to paradise--and that had closed now
forever.




CHAPTER XII

FROM BEHIND A COUNTER


Mrs. Carew was very angry. To have brought herself to the point where
she was willing to take this lame boy into her home, and then to have
the lad calmly refuse to come, was unbearable. Mrs. Carew was not in
the habit of having her invitations ignored, or her wishes scorned.
Furthermore, now that she could not have the boy, she was conscious of
an almost frantic terror lest he were, after all, the real Jamie. She
knew then that her true reason for wanting him had been--not because
she cared for him, not even because she wished to help him and make
him happy--but because she hoped, by taking him, that she would ease
her own mind, and forever silence that awful eternal questioning on
her part: "What if he WERE her own Jamie?"

It certainly had not helped matters any that the boy had divined her
state of mind, and had given as the reason for his refusal that she
"did not care." To be sure, Mrs. Carew now very proudly told herself
that she did not indeed "care," that he was NOT her sister's boy, and
that she would "forget all about it."

But she did not forget all about it. However insistently she might
disclaim responsibility and relationship, just as insistently
responsibility and relationship thrust themselves upon her in the
shape of panicky doubts; and however resolutely she turned her
thoughts to other matters, just so resolutely visions of a
wistful-eyed boy in a poverty-stricken room loomed always before her.

Then, too, there was Pollyanna. Clearly Pollyanna was not herself at
all. In a most unPollyanna-like spirit she moped about the house,
finding apparently no interest anywhere.

"Oh, no, I'm not sick," she would answer, when remonstrated with, and
questioned.

"But what IS the trouble?"

"Why, nothing. It--it's only that I was thinking of Jamie, you
know,--how HE hasn't got all these beautiful things--carpets, and
pictures, and curtains."

It was the same with her food. Pollyanna was actually losing her
appetite; but here again she disclaimed sickness.

"Oh, no," she would sigh mournfully. "It's just that I don't seem
hungry. Some way, just as soon as I begin to eat, I think of Jamie,
and how HE doesn't have only old doughnuts and dry rolls; and then
I--I don't want anything."

Mrs. Carew, spurred by a feeling that she herself only dimly
understood, and recklessly determined to bring about some change in
Pollyanna at all costs, ordered a huge tree, two dozen wreaths, and
quantities of holly and Christmas baubles. For the first time in many
years the house was aflame and aglitter with scarlet and tinsel. There
was even to be a Christmas party, for Mrs. Carew had told Pollyanna to
invite half a dozen of her schoolgirl friends for the tree on
Christmas Eve.

But even here Mrs. Carew met with disappointment; for, though
Pollyanna was always grateful, and at times interested and even
excited, she still carried frequently a sober little face. And in the
end the Christmas party was more of a sorrow than a joy; for the first
glimpse of the glittering tree sent her into a storm of sobs.

"Why, Pollyanna!" ejaculated Mrs. Carew. "What in the world is the
matter now?"

"N-n-nothing," wept Pollyanna. "It's only that it's so perfectly,
perfectly beautiful that I just had to cry. I was thinking how Jamie
would love to see it."

It was then that Mrs. Carew's patience snapped.

"'Jamie, Jamie, Jamie'!" she exclaimed. "Pollyanna, CAN'T you stop
talking about that boy? You know perfectly well that it is not my
fault that he is not here. I asked him to come here to live. Besides,
where is that glad game of yours? I think it would be an excellent
idea if you would play it on this."

"I AM playing it," quavered Pollyanna. "And that's what I don't
understand. I never knew it to act so funny. Why, before, when I've
been glad about things, I've been happy. But now, about Jamie--I'm so
glad I've got carpets and pictures and nice things to eat, and that I
can walk and run, and go to school, and all that; but the harder I'm
glad for myself, the sorrier I am for him. I never knew the game to
act so funny, and I don't know what ails it. Do you?"

But Mrs. Carew, with a despairing gesture, merely turned away without
a word.

It was the day after Christmas that something so wonderful happened
that Pollyanna, for a time, almost forgot Jamie. Mrs. Carew had taken
her shopping, and it was while Mrs. Carew was trying to decide between
a duchesse-lace and a point-lace collar, that Pollyanna chanced to spy
farther down the counter a face that looked vaguely familiar. For a
moment she regarded it frowningly; then, with a little cry, she ran
down the aisle.

"Oh, it's you--it IS you!" she exclaimed joyously to a girl who was
putting into the show case a tray of pink bows. "I'm so glad to see
you!"

The girl behind the counter lifted her head and stared at Pollyanna in
amazement. But almost immediately her dark, somber face lighted with a
smile of glad recognition.

"Well, well, if it isn't my little Public Garden kiddie!" she
ejaculated.

"Yes. I'm so glad you remembered," beamed Pollyanna. "But you never
came again. I looked for you lots of times."

"I couldn't. I had to work. That was our last half-holiday, and--Fifty
cents, madam," she broke off, in answer to a sweet-faced old lady's
question as to the price of a black-and-white bow on the counter.

"Fifty cents? Hm-m!" The old lady fingered the bow, hesitated, then
laid it down with a sigh. "Hm, yes; well, it's very pretty, I'm sure,
my dear," she said, as she passed on.

Immediately behind her came two bright-faced girls who, with much
giggling and bantering, picked out a jeweled creation of scarlet
velvet, and a fairy-like structure of tulle and pink buds. As the
girls turned chattering away Pollyanna drew an ecstatic sigh.

"Is this what you do all day? My, how glad you must be you chose
this!"

"GLAD!"

"Yes. It must be such fun--such lots of folks, you know, and all
different! And you can talk to 'em. You HAVE to talk to 'em--it's your
business. I should love that. I think I'll do this when I grow up. It
must be such fun to see what they all buy!"

"Fun! Glad!" bristled the girl behind the counter. "Well, child, I
guess if you knew half--That's a dollar, madam," she interrupted
herself hastily, in answer to a young woman's sharp question as to the
price of a flaring yellow bow of beaded velvet in the show case.

"Well, I should think 'twas time you told me," snapped the young
woman. "I had to ask you twice."

The girl behind the counter bit her lip.

"I didn't hear you, madam."

"I can't help that. It is your business TO hear. You are paid for it,
aren't you? How much is that black one?"

"Fifty cents."

"And that blue one?"

"One dollar."

"No impudence, miss! You needn't be so short about it, or I shall
report you. Let me see that tray of pink ones."

The salesgirl's lips opened, then closed in a thin, straight line.
Obediently she reached into the show case and took out the tray of
pink bows; but her eyes flashed, and her hands shook visibly as she
set the tray down on the counter. The young woman whom she was serving
picked up five bows, asked the price of four of them, then turned away
with a brief:

"I see nothing I care for."

"Well," said the girl behind the counter, in a shaking voice, to the
wide-eyed Pollyanna, "what do you think of my business now? Anything
to be glad about there?"

Pollyanna giggled a little hysterically.

"My, wasn't she cross? But she was kind of funny, too--don't you
think? Anyhow, you can be glad that--that they aren't ALL like HER,
can't you?"

"I suppose so," said the girl, with a faint smile, "But I can tell you
right now, kiddie, that glad game of yours you was tellin' me about
that day in the Garden may be all very well for you; but--" Once more
she stopped with a tired: "Fifty cents, madam," in answer to a
question from the other side of the counter.

"Are you as lonesome as ever?" asked Pollyanna wistfully, when the
salesgirl was at liberty again.

"Well, I can't say I've given more'n five parties, nor been to more'n
seven, since I saw you," replied the girl so bitterly that Pollyanna
detected the sarcasm.

"Oh, but you did something nice Christmas, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes. I stayed in bed all day with my feet done up in rags and
read four newspapers and one magazine. Then at night I hobbled out to
a restaurant where I had to blow in thirty-five cents for chicken pie
instead of a quarter."

"But what ailed your feet?"

"Blistered. Standin' on 'em--Christmas rush."

"Oh!" shuddered Pollyanna, sympathetically. "And you didn't have any
tree, or party, or anything?" she cried, distressed and shocked.

"Well, hardly!"

"O dear! How I wish you could have seen mine!" sighed the little girl.
"It was just lovely, and--But, oh, say!" she exclaimed joyously. "You
can see it, after all. It isn't gone yet. Now, can't you come out
to-night, or to-morrow night, and--"

"PollyANNA!" interrupted Mrs. Carew in her chilliest accents. "What in
the world does this mean? Where have you been? I have looked
everywhere for you. I even went 'way back to the suit department."

Pollyanna turned with a happy little cry.

"Oh, Mrs. Carew, I'm so glad you've come," she rejoiced. "This
is--well, I don't know her name yet, but I know HER, so it's all
right. I met her in the Public Garden ever so long ago. And she's
lonesome, and doesn't know anybody. And her father was a minister like
mine, only he's alive. And she didn't have any Christmas tree only
blistered feet and chicken pie; and I want her to see mine, you
know--the tree, I mean," plunged on Pollyanna, breathlessly. "I've
asked her to come out to-night, or to-morrow night. And you'll let me
have it all lighted up again, won't you?"

[Illustration: "'I don't know her name yet, but I know HER, so it's
all right'"]

"Well, really, Pollyanna," began Mrs. Carew, in cold disapproval. But
the girl behind the counter interrupted with a voice quite as cold,
and even more disapproving.

"Don't worry, madam. I've no notion of goin'."

"Oh, but PLEASE," begged Pollyanna. "You don't know how I want you,
and--"

"I notice the lady ain't doin' any askin'," interrupted the salesgirl,
a little maliciously.

Mrs. Carew flushed an angry red, and turned as if to go; but Pollyanna
caught her arm and held it, talking meanwhile almost frenziedly to the
girl behind the counter, who happened, at the moment, to be free from
customers.

"Oh, but she will, she will," Pollyanna was saying. "She wants you to
come--I know she does. Why, you don't know how good she is, and how
much money she gives to--to charitable 'sociations and everything."

"PollyANNA!" remonstrated Mrs. Carew, sharply. Once more she would
have gone, but this time she was held spellbound by the ringing scorn
in the low, tense voice of the salesgirl.

"Oh, yes, I know! There's lots of 'em that'll give to RESCUE work.
There's always plenty of helpin' hands stretched out to them that has
gone wrong. And that's all right. I ain't findin' no fault with that.
Only sometimes I wonder there don't some of 'em think of helpin' the
girls BEFORE they go wrong. Why don't they give GOOD girls pretty
homes with books and pictures and soft carpets and music, and somebody
'round 'em to care? Maybe then there wouldn't be so many--Good
heavens, what am I sayin'?" she broke off, under her breath. Then,
with the old weariness, she turned to a young woman who had stopped
before her and picked up a blue bow.

"That's fifty cents, madam," Mrs. Carew heard, as she hurried
Pollyanna away.




CHAPTER XIII

A WAITING AND A WINNING


It was a delightful plan. Pollyanna had it entirely formulated in
about five minutes; then she told Mrs. Carew. Mrs. Carew did not think
it was a delightful plan, and she said so very distinctly.

"Oh, but I'm sure THEY'LL think it is," argued Pollyanna, in reply to
Mrs. Carew's objections. "And just think how easy we can do it! The
tree is just as it was--except for the presents, and we can get more
of those. It won't be so very long till just New Year's Eve; and only
think how glad she'll be to come! Wouldn't YOU be, if you hadn't had
anything for Christmas only blistered feet and chicken pie?"

"Dear, dear, what an impossible child you are!" frowned Mrs. Carew.
"Even yet it doesn't seem to occur to you that we don't know this
young person's name."

"So we don't! And isn't it funny, when I feel that I know HER so
well?" smiled Pollyanna. "You see, we had such a good talk in the
Garden that day, and she told me all about how lonesome she was, and
that she thought the lonesomest place in the world was in a crowd in a
big city, because folks didn't think nor notice. Oh, there was one
that noticed; but he noticed too much, she said, and he hadn't ought
to notice her any--which is kind of funny, isn't it, when you come to
think of it. But anyhow, he came for her there in the Garden to go
somewhere with him, and she wouldn't go, and he was a real handsome
gentleman, too--until he began to look so cross, just at the last.
Folks aren't so pretty when they're cross, are they? Now there was a
lady to-day looking at bows, and she said--well, lots of things that
weren't nice, you know. And SHE didn't look pretty, either,
after--after she began to talk. But you will let me have the tree New
Year's Eve, won't you, Mrs. Carew?--and invite this girl who sells
bows, and Jamie? He's better, you know, now, and he COULD come. Of
course Jerry would have to wheel him--but then, we'd want Jerry,
anyway."

"Oh, of course, JERRY!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew in ironic scorn. "But why
stop with Jerry? I'm sure Jerry has hosts of friends who would love to
come. And--"

"Oh, Mrs. Carew, MAY I?" broke in Pollyanna, in uncontrollable
delight. "Oh, how good, GOOD, GOOD you are! I've so wanted--" But Mrs.
Carew fairly gasped aloud in surprise and dismay.

"No, no, Pollyanna, I--" she began, protestingly. But Pollyanna,
entirely mistaking the meaning of her interruption, plunged in again
in stout championship.

"Indeed you ARE good--just the bestest ever; and I sha'n't let you say
you aren't. Now I reckon I'll have a party all right! There's Tommy
Dolan and his sister Jennie, and the two Macdonald children, and three
girls whose names I don't know that live under the Murphys, and a
whole lot more, if we have room for 'em. And only think how glad
they'll be when I tell 'em! Why, Mrs. Carew, seems to me as if I never
knew anything so perfectly lovely in all my life--and it's all your
doings! Now mayn't I begin right away to invite 'em--so they'll KNOW
what's coming to 'em?"

And Mrs. Carew, who would not have believed such a thing possible,
heard herself murmuring a faint "yes," which, she knew, bound her to
the giving of a Christmas-tree party on New Year's Eve to a dozen
children from Murphy's Alley and a young salesgirl whose name she did
not know.

Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's memory was still lingering a young girl's
"Sometimes I wonder there don't some of 'em think of helpin' the girls
BEFORE they go wrong." Perhaps in her ears was still ringing
Pollyanna's story of that same girl who had found a crowd in a big
city the loneliest place in the world, yet who had refused to go with
the handsome man that had "noticed too much." Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's
heart was the undefined hope that somewhere in it all lay the peace
she had so longed for. Perhaps it was a little of all three combined
with utter helplessness in the face of Pollyanna's amazing twisting of
her irritated sarcasm into the wide-sweeping hospitality of a willing
hostess. Whatever it was, the thing was done; and at once Mrs. Carew
found herself caught into a veritable whirl of plans and plottings,
the center of which was always Pollyanna and the party.

To her sister, Mrs. Carew wrote distractedly of the whole affair,
closing with:

"What I'm going to do I don't know; but I suppose I shall have to keep
right on doing as I am doing. There is no other way. Of course, if
Pollyanna once begins to preach--but she hasn't yet; so I can't, with
a clear conscience, send her back to you."

Della, reading this letter at the Sanatorium, laughed aloud at the
conclusion.

"'Hasn't preached yet,' indeed!" she chuckled to herself. "Bless her
dear heart! And yet you, Ruth Carew, own up to giving two
Christmas-tree parties within a week, and, as I happen to know, your
home, which used to be shrouded in death-like gloom, is aflame with
scarlet and green from top to toe. But she hasn't preached yet--oh,
no, she hasn't preached yet!"

The party was a great success. Even Mrs. Carew admitted that. Jamie,
in his wheel chair, Jerry with his startling, but expressive
vocabulary, and the girl (whose name proved to be Sadie Dean), vied
with each other in amusing the more diffident guests. Sadie Dean, much
to the others' surprise--and perhaps to her own--disclosed an intimate
knowledge of the most fascinating games; and these games, with Jamie's
stories and Jerry's good-natured banter, kept every one in gales of
laughter until supper and the generous distribution of presents from
the laden tree sent the happy guests home with tired sighs of content.

If Jamie (who with Jerry was the last to leave) looked about him a bit
wistfully, no one apparently noticed it. Yet Mrs. Carew, when she bade
him good-night, said low in his ear, half impatiently, half
embarrassedly:

"Well, Jamie, have you changed your mind--about coming?"

The boy hesitated. A faint color stole into his cheeks. He turned and
looked into her eyes wistfully, searchingly. Then very slowly he shook
his head.

"If it could always be--like to-night, I--could," he sighed. "But it
wouldn't. There'd be to-morrow, and next week, and next month, and
next year comin'; and I'd know before next week that I hadn't oughter
come."


If Mrs. Carew had thought that the New Year's Eve party was to end the
matter of Pollyanna's efforts in behalf of Sadie Dean, she was soon
undeceived; for the very next morning Pollyanna began to talk of her.

"And I'm so glad I found her again," she prattled contentedly. "Even
if I haven't been able to find the real Jamie for you, I've found
somebody else for you to love--and of course you'll love to love her,
'cause it's just another way of loving Jamie."

Mrs. Carew drew in her breath and gave a little gasp of exasperation.
This unfailing faith in her goodness of heart, and unhesitating belief
in her desire to "help everybody" was most disconcerting, and
sometimes most annoying. At the same time it was a most difficult
thing to disclaim--under the circumstances, especially with
Pollyanna's happy, confident eyes full on her face.

"But, Pollyanna," she objected impotently, at last, feeling very much
as if she were struggling against invisible silken cords,
"I--you--this girl really isn't Jamie, at all, you know."

"I know she isn't," sympathized Pollyanna quickly. "And of course I'm
just as sorry she ISN'T Jamie as can be. But she's somebody's
Jamie--that is, I mean she hasn't got anybody down here to love her
and--and notice, you know; and so whenever you remember Jamie I should
think you couldn't be glad enough there was SOMEBODY you could help,
just as you'd want folks to help Jamie, wherever HE is."

Mrs. Carew shivered and gave a little moan.

"But I want MY Jamie," she grieved.

Pollyanna nodded with understanding eyes.

"I know--the 'child's presence.' Mr. Pendleton told me about it--only
you've GOT the 'woman's hand.'"

"'Woman's hand'?"

"Yes--to make a home, you know. He said that it took a woman's hand or
a child's presence to make a home. That was when he wanted me, and I
found him Jimmy, and he adopted him instead."

"JIMMY?" Mrs. Carew looked up with the startled something in her eyes
that always came into them at the mention of any variant of that name.

"Yes; Jimmy Bean."

"Oh--BEAN," said Mrs. Carew, relaxing.

"Yes. He was from an Orphan's Home, and he ran away. I found him. He
said he wanted another kind of a home with a mother in it instead of a
Matron. I couldn't find him the mother-part, but I found him Mr.
Pendleton, and he adopted him. His name is Jimmy Pendleton now."

"But it was--Bean?"

"Yes, it was Bean."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Carew, this time with a long sigh.

Mrs. Carew saw a good deal of Sadie Dean during the days that followed
the New Year's Eve party. She saw a good deal of Jamie, too. In one
way and another Pollyanna contrived to have them frequently at the
house; and this, Mrs. Carew, much to her surprise and vexation, could
not seem to prevent. Her consent and even her delight were taken by
Pollyanna as so much a matter of course that she found herself
helpless to convince the child that neither approval nor satisfaction
entered into the matter at all, as far as she was concerned.

But Mrs. Carew, whether she herself realized it or not, was learning
many things--things she never could have learned in the old days, shut
up in her rooms, with orders to Mary to admit no one. She was learning
something of what it means to be a lonely young girl in a big city,
with one's living to earn, and with no one to care--except one who
cares too much, and too little.

"But what did you mean?" she nervously asked Sadie Dean one evening;
"what did you mean that first day in the store--what you said--about
helping the girls?"

Sadie Dean colored distressfully.

"I'm afraid I was rude," she apologized.

"Never mind that. Tell me what you meant. I've thought of it so many
times since."

For a moment the girl was silent; then, a little bitterly she said:

"'Twas because I knew a girl once, and I was thinkin' of her. She came
from my town, and she was pretty and good, but she wa'n't over strong.
For a year we pulled together, sharin' the same room, boiling our eggs
over the same gas-jet, and eatin' our hash and fish balls for supper
at the same cheap restaurant. There was never anything to do evenin's
but to walk in the Common, or go to the movies, if we had the dime to
blow in, or just stay in our room. Well, our room wasn't very
pleasant. It was hot in summer, and cold in winter, and the gas-jet
was so measly and so flickery that we couldn't sew or read, even if we
hadn't been too fagged out to do either--which we 'most generally was.
Besides, over our heads was a squeaky board that some one was always
rockin' on, and under us was a feller that was learnin' to play the
cornet. Did you ever hear any one learn to play the cornet?"

"N-no, I don't think so," murmured Mrs. Carew.

"Well, you've missed a lot," said the girl, dryly. Then, after a
moment, she resumed her story.

"Sometimes, 'specially at Christmas and holidays, we used to walk up
here on the Avenue, and other streets, huntin' for windows where the
curtains were up, and we could look in. You see, we were pretty
lonesome, them days 'specially, and we said it did us good to see
homes with folks, and lamps on the center-tables, and children playin'
games; but we both of us knew that really it only made us feel worse
than ever, because we were so hopelessly out of it all. 'Twas even
harder to see the automobiles, and the gay young folks in them,
laughing and chatting. You see, we were young, and I suspect we wanted
to laugh and chatter. We wanted a good time, too; and, by and by--my
chum began to have it--this good time.

"Well, to make a long story short, we broke partnership one day, and
she went her way, and I mine. I didn't like the company she was
keepin', and I said so. She wouldn't give 'em up, so we quit. I didn't
see her again for 'most two years, then I got a note from her, and I
went. This was just last month. She was in one of them rescue homes.
It was a lovely place; soft rugs, fine pictures, plants, flowers, and
books, a piano, a beautiful room, and everything possible done for
her. Rich women came in their automobiles and carriages to take her
driving, and she was taken to concerts and matinees. She was learnin'
stenography, and they were going to help her to a position just as
soon as she could take it. Everybody was wonderfully good to her, she
said, and showed they wanted to help her in every way. But she said
something else, too. She said:

"'Sadie, if they'd taken one half the pains to show me they cared and
wanted to help long ago when I was an honest, self-respectin',
hard-workin' homesick girl--I wouldn't have been here for them to help
now.' And--well, I never forgot it. That's all. It ain't that I'm
objectin' to the rescue work--it's a fine thing, and they ought to do
it. Only I'm thinkin' there wouldn't be quite so much of it for them
to do--if they'd just show a little of their interest earlier in the
game."

"But I thought--there were working-girls' homes, and--and
settlement-houses that--that did that sort of thing," faltered Mrs.
Carew in a voice that few of her friends would have recognized.

"There are. Did you ever see the inside of one of them?"

"Why, n-no; though I--I have given money to them." This time Mrs.
Carew's voice was almost apologetically pleading in tone.

Sadie Dean smiled curiously.

"Yes, I know. There are lots of good women that have given money to
them--and have never seen the inside of one of them. Please don't
understand that I'm sayin' anythin' against the homes. I'm not.
They're good things. They're almost the only thing that's doing
anything to help; but they're only a drop in the bucket to what is
really needed. I tried one once; but there was an air about
it--somehow I felt-- But there, what's the use? Probably they aren't
all like that one, and maybe the fault was with me. If I should try to
tell you, you wouldn't understand. You'd have to live in it--and you
haven't even seen the inside of one. But I can't help wonderin'
sometimes why so many of those good women never seem to put the real
HEART and INTEREST into the preventin' that they do into the rescuin'.
But there! I didn't mean to talk such a lot. But--you asked me."

"Yes, I asked you," said Mrs. Carew in a half-stifled voice, as she
turned away.

Not only from Sadie Dean, however, was Mrs. Carew learning things
never learned before, but from Jamie, also.

Jamie was there a great deal. Pollyanna liked to have him there, and
he liked to be there. At first, to be sure, he had hesitated; but very
soon he had quieted his doubts and yielded to his longings by telling
himself (and Pollyanna) that, after all, visiting was not "staying for
keeps."

Mrs. Carew often found the boy and Pollyanna contentedly settled on
the library window-seat, with the empty wheel chair close by.
Sometimes they were poring over a book. (She heard Jamie tell
Pollyanna one day that he didn't think he'd mind so very much being
lame if he had so many books as Mrs. Carew, and that he guessed he'd
be so happy he'd fly clean away if he had both books and legs.)
Sometimes the boy was telling stories, and Pollyanna was listening,
wide-eyed and absorbed.

Mrs. Carew wondered at Pollyanna's interest--until one day she herself
stopped and listened. After that she wondered no longer--but she
listened a good deal longer. Crude and incorrect as was much of the
boy's language, it was always wonderfully vivid and picturesque, so
that Mrs. Carew found herself, hand in hand with Pollyanna, trailing
down the Golden Ages at the beck of a glowing-eyed boy.

Dimly Mrs. Carew was beginning to realize, too, something of what it
must mean, to be in spirit and ambition the center of brave deeds and
wonderful adventures, while in reality one was only a crippled boy in
a wheel chair. But what Mrs. Carew did not realize was the part this
crippled boy was beginning to play in her own life. She did not
realize how much a matter of course his presence was becoming, nor how
interested she now was in finding something new "for Jamie to see."
Neither did she realize how day by day he was coming to seem to her
more and more the lost Jamie, her dead sister's child.

As February, March, and April passed, however, and May came, bringing
with it the near approach of the date set for Pollyanna's home-going,
Mrs. Carew did suddenly awake to the knowledge of what that home-going
was 

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