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There was no reply this time, though Pollyanna waited patiently,
before she tried again--by a new route.
"Do You like being a minister?"
The Rev. Paul Ford looked up now, very quickly.
"Do I like--Why, what an odd question! Why do you ask that, my
dear?"
"Nothing--only the way you looked. It made me think of my father.
He used to look like that--sometimes."
"Did he?" The minister's voice was polite, but his eyes had gone
back to the dried leaf on the ground.
"Yes, and I used to ask him just as I did you if he was glad he
was a minister."
The man under the tree smiled a little sadly.
"Well--what did he say?"
"Oh, he always said he was, of course, but 'most always he said,
too, that he wouldn't STAY a minister a minute if 'twasn't for
the rejoicing texts."
"The--WHAT?" The Rev. Paul Ford's eyes left the leaf and gazed
wonderingly into Pollyanna's merry little face.
"Well, that's what father used to call 'em," she laughed. "Of
course the Bible didn't name 'em that. But it's all those that
begin 'Be glad in the Lord,' or 'Rejoice greatly,' or 'Shout for
joy,' and all that, you know--such a lot of 'em. Once, when
father felt specially bad, he counted 'em. There were eight
hundred of 'em."
"Eight hundred!"
"Yes--that told you to rejoice and be glad, you know; that's why
father named 'em the 'rejoicing texts.' "
"Oh!" There was an odd look on the minister's face. His eyes had
fallen to the words on the top paper in his hands--"But woe unto
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" "And so your
father--liked those 'rejoicing texts,' " he murmured.
"Oh, yes," nodded Pollyanna, emphatically. "He said he felt
better right away, that first day he thought to count 'em. He
said if God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be
glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it--SOME. And father felt
ashamed that he hadn't done it more. After that, they got to be
such a comfort to him, you know, when things went wrong; when the
Ladies' Aiders got to fight--I mean, when they DIDN'T AGREE about
something," corrected Pollyanna, hastily. "Why, it was those
texts, too, father said, that made HIM think of the game--he
began with ME on the crutches--but he said 'twas the rejoicing
texts that started him on it."
"And what game might that be?" asked the minister.
"About finding something in everything to be glad about, you
know. As I said, he began with me on the crutches." And once more
Pollyanna told her story--this time to a man who listened with
tender eyes and understanding ears.
A little later Pollyanna and the minister descended the hill,
hand in hand. Pollyanna's face was radiant. Pollyanna loved to
talk, and she had been talking now for some time: there seemed to
be so many, many things about the game, her father, and the old
home life that the minister wanted to know.
At the foot of the hill their ways parted, and Pollyanna down one
road, and the minister down another, walked on alone.
In the Rev. Paul Ford's study that evening the minister sat
thinking. Near him on the desk lay a few loose sheets of
paper--his sermon notes. Under the suspended pencil in his
fingers lay other sheets of paper, blank--his sermon to be. But
the minister was not thinking either of what he had written, or
of what he intended to write. In his imagination he was far away
in a little Western town with a missionary minister who was poor,
sick, worried, and almost alone in the world--but who was poring
over the Bible to find how many times his Lord and Master had
told him to "rejoice and be glad."
After a time, with a long sigh, the Rev. Paul Ford roused
himself, came back from the far Western town, and adjusted the
sheets of paper under his hand.
"Matthew twenty-third; 13--14 and 23," he wrote; then, with a
gesture of impatience, he dropped his pencil and pulled toward
him a magazine left on the desk by his wife a few minutes before.
Listlessly his tired eyes turned from paragraph to paragraph
until these words arrested them:
"A father one day said to his son, Tom, who, he knew, had refused
to fill his mother's woodbox that morning: 'Tom, I'm sure you'll
be glad to go and bring in some wood for your mother.' And
without a word Tom went. Why? Just because his father showed so
plainly that he expected him to do the right thing. Suppose he
had said: 'Tom, I overheard what you said to your mother this
morning, and I'm ashamed of you. Go at once and fill that
woodbox!' I'll warrant that woodbox, would be empty yet, so far
as Tom was concerned!"
On and on read the minister--a word here, a line there, a
paragraph somewhere else:
"What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural
resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened. . . .
Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his
virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to
him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win
out! . . . The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful
character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town. . . .
People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a
man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way,
too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes--his
neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest! . . .
When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When
you know you will find the good--you will get that. . . . Tell
your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox--then
watch him start, alert and interested!"
The minister dropped the paper and lifted his chin. In a moment
he was on his feet, tramping the narrow room back and forth, back
and forth. Later, some time later, he drew a long breath, and
dropped himself in the chair at his desk.
"God helping me, I'll do it!" he cried softly. "I'll tell all my
Toms I KNOW they'll be glad to fill that woodbox! I'll give them
work to do, and I'll make them so full of the very joy of doing
it that they won't have TIME to look at their neighbors'
woodboxes!" And he picked up his sermon notes, tore straight
through the sheets, and cast them from him, so that on one side
of his chair lay "But woe unto you," and on the other, "scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites!" while across the smooth white paper
before him his pencil fairly flew--after first drawing one black
line through Matthew twenty-third; 13--14 and 23."
Thus it happened that the Rev. Paul Ford's sermon the next Sunday
was a veritable bugle-call to the best that was in every man and
woman and child that heard it; and its text was one of
Pollyanna's shining eight hundred:
"Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy
all ye that are upright in heart."
CHAPTER XXIII. AN ACCIDENT
At Mrs. Snow's request, Pollyanna went one day to Dr. Chilton's
office to get the name of a medicine which Mrs. Snow had
forgotten. As it chanced, Pollyanna had never before seen the
inside of Dr. Chilton's office.
"I've never been to your home before! This IS your home, isn't
it?" she said, looking interestedly about her.
The doctor smiled a little sadly.
"Yes--such as 'tis," he answered, as he wrote something on the
pad of paper in his hand; "but it's a pretty poor apology for a
home, Pollyanna. They're just rooms, that's all--not a home."
Pollyanna nodded her head wisely. Her eyes glowed with
sympathetic understanding.
"I know. It takes a woman's hand and heart, or a child's presence
to make a home," she said.
"Eh?" The doctor wheeled about abruptly.
"Mr. Pendleton told me," nodded Pollyanna, again; "about the
woman's hand and heart, or the child's presence, you know. Why
don't you get a woman's hand and heart, Dr. Chilton? Or maybe
you'd take Jimmy Bean--if Mr. Pendleton doesn't want him."
Dr. Chilton laughed a little constrainedly.
"So Mr. Pendleton says it takes a woman's hand and heart to make
a home, does he?" he asked evasively.
"Yes. He says his is just a house, too. Why don't you, Dr.
Chilton?"
"Why don't I--what?" The doctor had turned back to his desk.
"Get a woman's hand and heart. Oh--and I forgot." Pollyanna's
face showed suddenly a painful color. "I suppose I ought to tell
you. It wasn't Aunt Polly that Mr. Pendleton loved long ago; and
so we--we aren't going there to live. You see, I told you it
was--but I made a mistake. I hope YOU didn't tell any one," she
finished anxiously.
"No--I didn't tell any one, Pollyanna," replied the doctor, a
little queerly.
"Oh, that's all right, then," sighed Pollyanna in relief. "You
see you're the only one I told, and I thought Mr. Pendleton
looked sort of funny when I said I'd told YOU."
"Did he?" The doctor's lips twitched.
"Yes. And of course he wouldn't want many people to know it--when
'twasn't true. But why don't you get a woman's hand and heart,
Dr. Chilton?"
There was a moment's silence; then very gravely the doctor said:
"They're not always to be had--for the asking, little girl."
Pollyanna frowned thoughtfully.
"But I should think you could get 'em," she argued. The
flattering emphasis was unmistakable.
"Thank you," laughed the doctor, with uplifted eyebrows. Then,
gravely again: "I'm afraid some of your older sisters would not
be quite so--confident. At least, they--they haven't shown
themselves to be so--obliging," he observed.
Pollyanna frowned again. Then her eyes widened in surprise.
"Why, Dr. Chilton, you don't mean--you didn't try to get
somebody's hand and heart once, like Mr. Pendleton, and--and
couldn't, did you?"
The doctor got to his feet a little abruptly.
"There, there, Pollyanna, never mind about that now. Don't let
other people's troubles worry your little head. Suppose you run
back now to Mrs. Snow. I've written down the name of the
medicine, and the directions how she is to take it. Was there
anything else?"
Pollyanna shook her head.
"No, Sir; thank you, Sir," she murmured soberly, as she turned
toward the door. From the little hallway she called back, her
face suddenly alight: "Anyhow, I'm glad 'twasn't my mother's
hand and heart that you wanted and couldn't get, Dr. Chilton.
Good-by!"
It was on the last day of October that the accident occurred.
Pollyanna, hurrying home from school, crossed the road at an
apparently safe distance in front of a swiftly approaching motor
car.
Just what happened, no one could seem to tell afterward. Neither
was there any one found who could tell why it happened or who was
to blame that it did happen. Pollyanna, however, at five o'clock,
was borne, limp and unconscious, into the little room that was so
dear to her. There, by a white-faced Aunt Polly and a weeping
Nancy she was undressed tenderly and put to bed, while from the
village, hastily summoned by telephone, Dr. Warren was hurrying
as fast as another motor car could bring him.
"And ye didn't need ter more'n look at her aunt's face," Nancy
was sobbing to Old Tom in the garden, after the doctor had
arrived and was closeted in the hushed room; "ye didn't need ter
more'n look at her aunt's face ter see that 'twa'n't no duty that
was eatin' her. Yer hands don't shake, and yer eyes don't look as
if ye was tryin' ter hold back the Angel o' Death himself, when
you're jest doin' yer DUTY, Mr. Tom they don't, they don't!"
"Is she hurt--bad?" The old man's voice shook.
"There ain't no tellin'," sobbed Nancy. "She lay back that white
an' still she might easy be dead; but Miss Polly said she wa'n't
dead--an' Miss Polly had oughter know, if any one would--she kept
up such a listenin' an' a feelin' for her heartbeats an' her
breath!"
"Couldn't ye tell anythin' what it done to her?--that--that--"
Old Tom's face worked convulsively.
Nancy's lips relaxed a little.
"I wish ye WOULD call it somethin', Mr. Tom an' somethin' good
an' strong, too. Drat it! Ter think of its runnin' down our
little girl! I always hated the evil-smellin' things, anyhow--I
did, I did!"
"But where is she hurt?"
"I don't know, I don't know," moaned Nancy. "There's a little cut
on her blessed head, but 'tain't bad--that ain't--Miss Polly
says. She says she's afraid it's infernally she's hurt."
A faint flicker came into Old Tom's eyes.
"I guess you mean internally, Nancy," he said dryly. "She's hurt
infernally, all right--plague take that autymobile!--but I don't
guess Miss Polly'd be usin' that word, all the same."
"Eh? Well, I don't know, I don't know," moaned Nancy, with a
shake of her head as she turned away. "Seems as if I jest
couldn't stand it till that doctor gits out o' there. I wish I
had a washin' ter do--the biggest washin' I ever see, I do, I
do!" she wailed, wringing her hands helplessly.
Even after the doctor was gone, however, there seemed to be
little that Nancy could tell Mr. Tom. There appeared to be no
bones broken, and the cut was of slight consequence; but the
doctor had looked very grave, had shaken his head slowly, and had
said that time alone could tell. After he had gone, Miss Polly
had shown a face even whiter and more drawn looking than before.
The patient had not fully recovered consciousness, but at present
she seemed to be resting as comfortably as could be expected. A
trained nurse had been sent for, and would come that night. That
was all. And Nancy turned sobbingly, and went back to her
kitchen.
It was sometime during the next forenoon that Pollyanna opened
conscious eyes and realized where she was.
"Why, Aunt Polly, what's the matter? Isn't it daytime? Why don't
I get up?" she cried. "Why, Aunt Polly, I can't get up," she
moaned, falling back on the pillow, after an ineffectual attempt
to lift herself.
"No, dear, I wouldn't try--just yet," soothed her aunt quickly,
but very quietly.
"But what is the matter? Why can't I get up?"
Miss Polly's eyes asked an agonized question of the white-capped
young woman standing in the window, out of the range of
Pollyanna's eyes.
The young woman nodded.
"Tell her," the lips said.
Miss Polly cleared her throat, and tried to swallow the lump that
would scarcely let her speak.
"You were hurt, dear, by the automobile last night. But never
mind that now. Auntie wants you to rest and go to sleep again."
"Hurt? Oh, yes; I--I ran." Pollyanna's eyes were dazed. She
lifted her hand to her forehead. "Why, it's--done up, and
it--hurts!"
"Yes, dear; but never mind. Just--just rest."
"But, Aunt Polly, I feel so funny, and so bad! My legs feel
so--so queer--only they don't FEEL--at all!"
With an imploring look into the nurse's face, Miss Polly
struggled to her feet, and turned away. The nurse came forward
quickly.
"Suppose you let me talk to you now," she began cheerily. "I'm
sure I think it's high time we were getting acquainted, and I'm
going to introduce myself. I am Miss Hunt, and I've come to help
your aunt take care of you. And the very first thing I'm going to
do is to ask you to swallow these little white pills for me."
Pollyanna's eyes grew a bit wild.
"But I don't want to be taken care of--that is, not for long! I
want to get up. You know I go to school. Can't I go to school
to-morrow?"
From the window where Aunt Polly stood now there came a
half-stifled cry.
"To-morrow?" smiled the nurse, brightly.
"Well, I may not let you out quite so soon as that, Miss
Pollyanna. But just swallow these little pills for me, please,
and we'll see what THEY'LL do."
"All right," agreed Pollyanna, somewhat doubtfully; "but I MUST
go to school day after to-morrow--there are examinations then,
you know."
She spoke again, a minute later. She spoke of school, and of the
automobile, and of how her head ached; but very soon her voice
trailed into silence under the blessed influence of the little
white pills she had swallowed.
CHAPTER XXIV. JOHN PENDLETON
Pollyanna did not go to school "to-morrow," nor the "day after
to-morrow." Pollyanna, however, did not realize this, except
momentarily when a brief period of full consciousness sent
insistent questions to her lips. Pollyanna did not realize
anything, in fact, very clearly until a week had passed; then the
fever subsided, the pain lessened somewhat, and her mind awoke to
full consciousness. She had then to be told all over again what
had occurred.
"And so it's hurt that I am, and not sick," she sighed at last.
"Well, I'm glad of that."
"G-glad, Pollyanna?" asked her aunt, who was sitting by the bed.
"Yes. I'd so much rather have broken legs like Mr. Pendleton's
than life-long-invalids like Mrs. Snow, you know. Broken legs get
well, and lifelong-invalids don't."
Miss Polly--who had said nothing whatever about broken legs--got
suddenly to her feet and walked to the little dressing table
across the room. She was picking up one object after another now,
and putting each down, in an aimless fashion quite unlike her
usual decisiveness. Her face was not aimless-looking at all,
however; it was white and drawn.
On the bed Pollyanna lay blinking at the dancing band of colors
on the ceiling, which came from one of the prisms in the window.
"I'm glad it isn't smallpox that ails me, too," she murmured
contentedly. "That would be worse than freckles. And I'm glad
'tisn't whooping cough--I've had that, and it's horrid--and I'm
glad 'tisn't appendicitis nor measles, 'cause they're
catching--measles are, I mean--and they wouldn't let you stay
here."
"You seem to--to be glad for a good many things, my dear,"
faltered Aunt Polly, putting her hand to her throat as if her
collar bound.
Pollyanna laughed softly.
"I am. I've been thinking of 'em--lots of 'em--all the time I've
been looking up at that rainbow. I love rainbows. I'm so glad Mr.
Pendleton gave me those prisms! I'm glad of some things I haven't
said yet. I don't know but I'm 'most glad I was hurt."
"Pollyanna!"
Pollyanna laughed softly again. She turned luminous eyes on her
aunt. "Well, you see, since I have been hurt, you've called me
'dear' lots of times--and you didn't before. I love to be called
'dear'--by folks that belong to you, I mean. Some of the Ladies'
Aiders did call me that; and of course that was pretty nice, but
not so nice as if they had belonged to me, like you do. Oh, Aunt
Polly, I'm so glad you belong to me!"
Aunt Polly did not answer. Her hand was at her throat again. Her
eyes were full of tears. She had turned away and was hurrying
from the room through the door by which the nurse had just
entered.
It was that afternoon that Nancy ran out to Old Tom, who was
cleaning harnesses in the barn. Her eyes were wild.
"Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, guess what's happened," she panted. "You
couldn't guess in a thousand years--you couldn't, you couldn't!"
"Then I cal'late I won't try," retorted the man, grimly,
"specially as I hain't got more'n TEN ter live, anyhow, probably.
You'd better tell me first off, Nancy."
"Well, listen, then. Who do you s'pose is in the parlor now with
the mistress? Who, I say?"
Old Tom shook his head.
"There's no tellin'," he declared.
"Yes, there is. I'm tellin'. It's--John Pendleton!"
"Sho, now! You're jokin', girl."
"Not much I am--an' me a-lettin' him in myself--crutches an' all!
An' the team he come in a-waitin' this minute at the door for
him, jest as if he wa'n't the cranky old crosspatch he is, what
never talks ter no one! jest think, Mr. Tom--HIM a-callin' on
HER!"
"Well, why not?" demanded the old man, a little aggressively.
Nancy gave him a scornful glance.
"As if you didn't know better'n me!" she derided.
"Eh?"
"Oh, you needn't be so innercent," she retorted with mock
indignation; "--you what led me wildgoose chasin' in the first
place!"
"What do ye mean?"
Nancy glanced through the open barn door toward the house, and
came a step nearer to the old man.
"Listen! 'Twas you that was tellin' me Miss Polly had a lover in
the first place, wa'n't it? Well, one day I thinks I finds two
and two, and I puts 'em tergether an' makes four. But it turns
out ter be five--an' no four at all, at all!"
With a gesture of indifference Old Tom turned and fell to work.
"If you're goin' ter talk ter me, you've got ter talk plain horse
sense," he declared testily. "I never was no hand for figgers."
Nancy laughed.
"Well, it's this," she explained. "I heard somethin' that made me
think him an' Miss Polly was lovers."
"MR. PENDLETON!" Old Tom straightened up.
"Yes. Oh, I know now; he wasn't. It was that blessed child's
mother he was in love with, and that's why he wanted--but never
mind that part," she added hastily, remembering just in time her
promise to Pollyanna not to tell that Mr. Pendleton had wished
her to come and live with him. "Well, I've been askin' folks
about him some, since, and I've found out that him an' Miss Polly
hain't been friends for years, an' that she's been hatin' him
like pizen owin' ter the silly gossip that coupled their names
tergether when she was eighteen or twenty."
"Yes, I remember," nodded Old Tom. "It was three or four years
after Miss Jennie give him the mitten and went off with the other
chap. Miss Polly knew about it, of course, and was sorry for him.
So she tried ter be nice to him. Maybe she overdid it a
little--she hated that minister chap so who had took off her
sister. At any rate, somebody begun ter make trouble. They said
she was runnin' after him."
"Runnin' after any man--her!" interjected Nancy.
"I know it; but they did," declared Old Tom, "and of course no
gal of any spunk'll stand that. Then about that time come her own
lover an' the trouble with HIM. After that she shut up like an
oyster an' wouldn't have nothin' ter do with nobody fur a spell.
Her heart jest seemed to turn bitter at the core."
"Yes, I know. I've heard about that now," rejoined Nancy; "an'
that's why you could 'a' knocked me down with a feather when I
see HIM at the door--him, what she hain't spoke to for years! But
I let him in an' went an' told her."
"What did she say?" Old Tom held his breath suspended.
"Nothin'--at first. She was so still I thought she hadn't heard;
and I was jest goin' ter say it over when she speaks up quiet
like: 'Tell Mr. Pendleton I will be down at once.' An' I come
an' told him. Then I come out here an' told you," finished Nancy,
casting another backward glance toward the house.
"Humph!" grunted Old Tom; and fell to work again.
In the ceremonious "parlor" of the Harrington homestead, Mr. John
Pendleton did not have to wait long before a swift step warned
him of Miss Polly's coming. As he attempted to rise, she made a
gesture of remonstrance. She did not offer her hand, however, and
her face was coldly reserved.
"I called to ask for--Pollyanna," he began at once, a little
brusquely.
"Thank you. She is about the same," said Miss Polly.
"And that is--won't you tell me HOW she is?" His voice was not
quite steady this time.
A quick spasm of pain crossed the woman's face.
"I can't, I wish I could!"
"You mean--you don't know?"
"Yes."
"But--the doctor?"
"Dr. Warren himself seems--at sea. He is in correspondence now
with a New York specialist. They have arranged for a consultation
at once."
"But--but what WERE her injuries that you do know?"
"A slight cut on the head, one or two bruises, and--and an injury
to the spine which has seemed to cause--paralysis from the hips
down."
A low cry came from the man. There was a brief silence; then,
huskily, he asked:
"And Pollyanna--how does she--take it?"
"She doesn't understand--at all--how things really are. And I
CAN'T tell her."
"But she must know--something!"
Miss Polly lifted her hand to the collar at her throat in the
gesture that had become so common to her of late.
"Oh, yes. She knows she can't--move; but she thinks her legs
are--broken. She says she's glad it's broken legs like yours
rather than 'lifelong-invalids' like Mrs. Snow's; because broken
legs get well, and the other--doesn't. She talks like that all
the time, until it--it seems as if I should--die!"
Through the blur of tears in his own eyes, the man saw the drawn
face opposite, twisted with emotion. Involuntarily his thoughts
went back to what Pollyanna had said when he had made his final
plea for her presence: "Oh, I couldn't leave Aunt Polly--now!"
It was this thought that made him ask very gently, as soon as he
could control his voice:
"I wonder if you know, Miss Harrington, how hard I tried to get
Pollyanna to come and live with me."
"With YOU!--Pollyanna!"
The man winced a little at the tone of her voice; but his own
voice was still impersonally cool when he spoke again.
"Yes. I wanted to adopt her--legally, you understand; making her
my heir, of course."
The woman in the opposite chair relaxed a little. It came to her,
suddenly, what a brilliant future it would have meant for
Pollyanna--this adoption; and she wondered if Pollyanna were old
enough and mercenary enough--to be tempted by this man's money
and position.
"I am very fond of Pollyanna," the man was continuing. "I am fond
of her both for her own sake, and for--her mother's. I stood
ready to give Pollyanna the love that had been twenty-five years
in storage."
"LOVE." Miss Polly remembered suddenly why SHE had taken this
child in the first place--and with the recollection came the
remembrance of Pollyanna's own words uttered that very morning:
"I love to be called 'dear' by folks that belong to you!" And it
was this love-hungry little girl that had been offered the
stored-up affection of twenty-five years:--and she was old enough
to be tempted by love! With a sinking heart Miss Polly realized
that. With a sinking heart, too, she realized something else: the
dreariness of her own future now without Pollyanna.
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