Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra.

E >> Eleanor H. Porter >> Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

To her surprise the doctor gave a sudden exclamation.

"Never! Pollyanna, I--I'm afraid I shall have to ask you not to
tell her--that."

"Why, Dr. Chilton! Why not? I should think you'd be glad--"

"But she might not be," cut in the doctor.

Pollyanna considered this for a moment.

"That's so--maybe she wouldn't," she sighed. "I remember now;
'twas 'cause she saw you that she ran. And she--she spoke
afterwards about her being seen in that rig."

"I thought as much," declared the doctor, under his breath.

"Still, I don't see why," maintained Pollyanna, "--when she
looked so pretty!"

The doctor said nothing. He did not speak again, indeed, until
they were almost to the great stone house in which John Pendleton
lay with a broken leg.

CHAPTER XVII. "JUST LIKE A BOOK"

John Pendleton greeted Pollyanna to-day with a smile.

"Well, Miss Pollyanna, I'm thinking you must be a very forgiving
little person, else you wouldn't have come to see me again
to-day."

"Why, Mr. Pendleton, I was real glad to come, and I'm sure I
don't see why I shouldn't be, either."

"Oh, well, you know, I was pretty cross with you, I'm afraid,
both the other day when you so kindly brought me the jelly, and
that time when you found me with the broken leg at first. By the
way, too, I don't think I've ever thanked you for that. Now I'm
sure that even you would admit that you were very forgiving to
come and see me, after such ungrateful treatment as that!"

Pollyanna stirred uneasily.

"But I was glad to find you--that is, I don't mean I was glad
your leg was broken, of course," she corrected hurriedly.

John Pendleton smiled.

"I understand. Your tongue does get away with you once in a
while, doesn't it, Miss Pollyanna? I do thank you, however; and I
consider you a very brave little girl to do what you did that
day. I thank you for the jelly, too," he added in a lighter
voice.

"Did you like it?" asked Pollyanna with interest.

"Very much. I suppose--there isn't any more to-day that--that
Aunt Polly DIDN'T send, is there?" he asked with an odd smile.

His visitor looked distressed.

"N-no, sir." She hesitated, then went on with heightened color.
"Please, Mr. Pendleton, I didn't mean to be rude the other day
when I said Aunt Polly did NOT send the jelly."

There was no answer. John Pendleton was not smiling now. He was
looking straight ahead of him with eyes that seemed to be gazing
through and beyond the object before them. After a time he drew a
long sigh and turned to Pollyanna. When he spoke his voice
carried the old nervous fretfulness.

"Well, well, this will never do at all! I didn't send for you to
see me moping this time. Listen! Out in the library--the big room
where the telephone is, you know--you will find a carved box on
the lower shelf of the big case with glass doors in the corner
not far from the fireplace. That is, it'll be there if that
confounded woman hasn't 'regulated' it to somewhere else! You may
bring it to me. It is heavy, but not too heavy for you to carry,
I think."

"Oh, I'm awfully strong," declared Pollyanna, cheerfully, as she
sprang to her feet. In a minute she had returned with the box.

It was a wonderful half-hour that Pollyanna spent then. The box
was full of treasures--curios that John Pendleton had picked up
in years of travel--and concerning each there was some
entertaining story, whether it were a set of exquisitely carved
chessmen from China, or a little jade idol from India.

It was after she had heard the story about the idol that
Pollyanna murmured wistfully:

"Well, I suppose it WOULD be better to take a little boy in India
to bring up--one that didn't know any more than to think that God
was in that doll-thing--than it would be to take Jimmy Bean, a
little boy who knows God is up in the sky. Still, I can't help
wishing they had wanted Jimmy Bean, too, besides the India boys."

John Pendleton did not seem to hear. Again his, eyes were staring
straight before him, looking at nothing. But soon he had roused
himself, and had picked up another curio to talk about.

The visit, certainly, was a delightful one, but before it was
over, Pollyanna was realizing that they were talking about
something besides the wonderful things in the beautiful carved
box. They were talking of herself, of Nancy, of Aunt Polly, and
of her daily life. They were talking, too, even of the life and
home long ago in the far Western town.

Not until it was nearly time for her to go, did the man say, in a
voice Pollyanna had never before heard from stern John Pendleton:

"Little girl, I want you to come to see me often. Will you? I'm
lonesome, and I need you. There's another reason--and I'm going
to tell you that, too. I thought, at first, after I found out who
you were, the other day, that I didn't want you to come any more.
You reminded me of--of something I have tried for long years to
forget. So I said to myself that I never wanted to see you again;
and every day, when the doctor asked if I wouldn't let him bring
you to me, I said no.

"But after a time I found I was wanting to see you so much
that--that the fact that I WASN'T seeing you was making me
remember all the more vividly the thing I was so wanting to
forget. So now I want you to come. Will you--little girl?"

"Why, yes, Mr. Pendleton," breathed Pollyanna, her eyes luminous
with sympathy for the sad-faced man lying back on the pillow
before her. "I'd love to come!"

"Thank you," said John Pendleton, gently.

After supper that evening, Pollyanna, sitting on the back porch,
told Nancy all about Mr. John Pendleton's wonderful carved box,
and the still more wonderful things it contained.

"And ter think," sighed Nancy, "that he SHOWED ye all them
things, and told ye about 'em like that--him that's so cross he
never talks ter no one--no one!"

"Oh, but he isn't cross, Nancy, only outside," demurred
Pollyanna, with quick loyalty. "I don't see why everybody thinks
he's so bad, either. They wouldn't, if they knew him. But even
Aunt Polly doesn't like him very well. She wouldn't send the
jelly to him, you know, and she was so afraid he'd think she did
send it!"

"Probably she didn't call him no duty," shrugged Nancy. "But what
beats me is how he happened ter take ter you so, Miss
Pollyanna--meanin' no offence ter you, of course--but he ain't
the sort o' man what gen'rally takes ter kids; he ain't, he
ain't."

Pollyanna smiled happily.

"But he did, Nancy," she nodded, "only I reckon even he didn't
want to--ALL the time. Why, only to-day he owned up that one time
he just felt he never wanted to see me again, because I reminded
him of something he wanted to forget. But afterwards--"

"What's that?" interrupted Nancy, excitedly. "He said you
reminded him of something he wanted to forget?"

"Yes. But afterwards--"

"What was it?" Nancy was eagerly insistent.

"He didn't tell me. He just said it was something."

"THE MYSTERY!" breathed Nancy, in an awestruck voice. "That's why
he took to you in the first place. Oh, Miss Pollyanna! Why,
that's just like a book--I've read lots of 'em; 'Lady Maud's
Secret,' and 'The Lost Heir,' and 'Hidden for Years'--all of 'em
had mysteries and things just like this. My stars and stockings!
Just think of havin' a book lived right under yer nose like this
an' me not knowin' it all this time! Now tell me
everythin'--everythin' he said, Miss Pollyanna, there's a dear!
No wonder he took ter you; no wonder--no wonder!"

"But he didn't," cried Pollyanna, "not till _I_ talked to HIM,
first. And he didn't even know who I was till I took the
calf's-foot jelly, and had to make him understand that Aunt Polly
didn't send it, and--"

Nancy sprang to her feet and clasped her hands together suddenly.

"Oh, Miss Pollyanna, I know, I know--I KNOW I know!" she exulted
rapturously. The next minute she was down at Pollyanna's side
again. "Tell me--now think, and answer straight and true," she
urged excitedly. "It was after he found out you was Miss Polly's
niece that he said he didn't ever want ter see ye again, wa'n't
it?"

"Oh, yes. I told him that the last time I saw him, and he told me
this to-day."

"I thought as much," triumphed Nancy. "And Miss Polly wouldn't
send the jelly herself, would she?"

"No."

"And you told him she didn't send it?"

"Why, yes; I--"

"And he began ter act queer and cry out sudden after he found out
you was her niece. He did that, didn't he?"

"Why, y-yes; he did act a little queer--over that jelly,"
admitted Pollyanna, with a thoughtful frown.

Nancy drew a long sigh.

"Then I've got it, sure! Now listen. MR. JOHN PENDLETON WAS MISS
POLLY HARRINGTON'S LOVER!" she announced impressively, but with a
furtive glance over her shoulder.

"Why, Nancy, he couldn't be! She doesn't like him," objected
Pollyanna.

Nancy gave her a scornful glance.

"Of course she don't! THAT'S the quarrel!"

Pollyanna still looked incredulous, and with another long breath
Nancy happily settled herself to tell the story.

"It's like this. Just before you come, Mr. Tom told me Miss Polly
had had a lover once. I didn't believe it. I couldn't--her and a
lover! But Mr. Tom said she had, and that he was livin' now right
in this town. And NOW I know, of course. It's John Pendleton.
Hain't he got a mystery in his life? Don't he shut himself up in
that grand house alone, and never speak ter no one? Didn't he act
queer when he found out you was Miss Polly's niece? And now
hain't he owned up that you remind him of somethin' he wants ter
forget? Just as if ANYBODY couldn't see 'twas Miss Polly!--an'
her sayin' she wouldn't send him no jelly, too. Why, Miss
Pollyanna, it's as plain as the nose on yer face; it is, it is!"

"Oh-h!" breathed Pollyanna, in wide-eyed amazement. "But, Nancy,
I should think if they loved each other they'd make up some time.
Both of 'em all alone, so, all these years. I should think they'd
be glad to make up!"

Nancy sniffed disdainfully.

"I guess maybe you don't know much about lovers, Miss Pollyanna.
You ain't big enough yet, anyhow. But if there IS a set o' folks
in the world that wouldn't have no use for that 'ere 'glad game'
o' your'n, it'd be a pair o' quarrellin' lovers; and that's what
they be. Ain't he cross as sticks, most gen'rally?--and ain't
she--"

Nancy stopped abruptly, remembering just in time to whom, and
about whom, she was speaking. Suddenly, however, she chuckled.

"I ain't sayin', though, Miss Pollyanna, but what it would be a
pretty slick piece of business if you could GET 'em ter playin'
it--so they WOULD be glad ter make up. But, my land! wouldn't
folks stare some--Miss Polly and him! I guess, though, there
ain't much chance, much chance!"

Pollyanna said nothing; but when she went into the house a little
later, her face was very thoughtful.

CHAPTER XVIII. PRISMS

As the warm August days passed, Pollyanna went very frequently to
the great house on Pendleton Hill. She did not feel, however,
that her visits were really a success. Not but that the man
seemed to want her there--he sent for her, indeed, frequently;
but that when she was there, he seemed scarcely any the happier
for her presence--at least, so Pollyanna thought.

He talked to her, it was true, and he showed her many strange and
beautiful things--books, pictures, and curios. But he still
fretted audibly over his own helplessness, and he chafed visibly
under the rules and "regulatings" of the unwelcome members of his
household. He did, indeed, seem to like to hear Pollyanna talk,
however, and Pollyanna talked, Pollyanna liked to talk--but she
was never sure that she would not look up and find him lying back
on his pillow with that white, hurt look that always pained her;
and she was never sure which--if any--of her words had brought it
there. As for telling him the "glad game," and trying to get him
to play it--Pollyanna had never seen the time yet when she
thought he would care to hear about it. She had twice tried to
tell him; but neither time had she got beyond the beginning of
what her father had said--John Pendleton had on each occasion
turned the conversation abruptly to another subject.

Pollyanna never doubted now that John Pendleton was her Aunt
Polly's one-time lover; and with all the strength of her loving,
loyal heart, she wished she could in some way bring happiness
into their to her mind--miserably lonely lives.

Just how she was to do this, however, she could not see. She
talked to Mr. Pendleton about her aunt; and he listened,
sometimes politely, sometimes irritably, frequently with a
quizzical smile on his usually stern lips. She talked to her aunt
about Mr. Pendleton--or rather, she tried to talk to her about
him. As a general thing, however, Miss Polly would not
listen--long. She always found something else to talk about. She
frequently did that, however, when Pollyanna was talking of
others--of Dr. Chilton, for instance. Pollyanna laid this,
though, to the fact that it had been Dr. Chilton who had seen her
in the sun parlor with the rose in her hair and the lace shawl
draped about her shoulders. Aunt Polly, indeed, seemed
particularly bitter against Dr. Chilton, as Pollyanna found out
one day when a hard cold shut her up in the house.

"If you are not better by night I shall send for the doctor,"
Aunt Polly said.

"Shall you? Then I'm going to be worse," gurgled Pollyanna. "I'd
love to have Dr. Chilton come to see me!"

She wondered, then, at the look that came to her aunt's face.

"It will not be Dr. Chilton, Pollyanna," Miss Polly said sternly.
"Dr. Chilton is not our family physician. I shall send for Dr.
Warren--if you are worse."

Pollyanna did not grow worse, however, and Dr. Warren was not
summoned.

"And I'm so glad, too," Pollyanna said to her aunt that evening.
"Of course I like Dr. Warren, and all that; but I like Dr.
Chilton better, and I'm afraid he'd feel hurt if I didn't have
him. You see, he wasn't really to blame, after all, that he
happened to see you when I'd dressed you up so pretty that day,
Aunt Polly," she finished wistfully.

"That will do, Pollyanna. I really do not wish to discuss Dr.
Chilton--or his feelings," reproved Miss Polly, decisively.

Pollyanna looked at her for a moment with mournfully interested
eyes; then she sighed:

"I just love to see you when your cheeks are pink like that, Aunt
Polly; but I would so like to fix your hair. If--Why, Aunt
Polly!" But her aunt was already out of sight down the hall.

It was toward the end of August that Pollyanna, making an early
morning call on John Pendleton, found the flaming band of blue
and gold and green edged with red and violet lying across his
pillow. She stopped short in awed delight.

"Why, Mr. Pendleton, it's a baby rainbow--a real rainbow come in
to pay you a visit!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands together
softly. "Oh--oh--oh, how pretty it is! But how DID it get in?"
she cried.

The man laughed a little grimly: John Pendleton was particularly
out of sorts with the world this morning.

"Well, I suppose it 'got in' through the bevelled edge of that
glass thermometer in the window," he said wearily. "The sun
shouldn't strike it at all but it does in the morning."

"Oh, but it's so pretty, Mr. Pendleton! And does just the sun do
that? My! if it was mine I'd have it hang in the sun all day
long!"

"Lots of good you'd get out of the thermometer, then," laughed
the man. "How do you suppose you could tell how hot it was, or
how cold it was, if the thermometer hung in the sun all day?"

"I shouldn't care," breathed Pollyanna, her fascinated eyes on
the brilliant band of colors across the pillow. "Just as if
anybody'd care when they were living all the time in a rainbow!"

The man laughed. He was watching Pollyanna's rapt face a little
curiously. Suddenly a new thought came to him. He touched the
bell at his side.

"Nora," he said, when the elderly maid appeared at the door,
"bring me one of the big brass candle-sticks from the mantel in
the front drawing-room."

"Yes, sir," murmured the woman, looking slightly dazed. In a
minute she had returned. A musical tinkling entered the room with
her as she advanced wonderingly toward the bed. It came from the
prism pendants encircling the old-fashioned candelabrum in her
hand.

"Thank you. You may set it here on the stand," directed the man.
"Now get a string and fasten it to the sash-curtain fixtures of
that window there. Take down the sash-curtain, and let the string
reach straight across the window from side to side. That will be
all. Thank you," he said, when she had carried out his
directions.

As she left the room he turned smiling eyes toward the wondering
Pollyanna.

"Bring me the candlestick now, please, Pollyanna."

With both hands she brought it; and in a moment he was slipping
off the pendants, one by one, until they lay, a round dozen of
them, side by side, on the bed.

"Now, my dear, suppose you take them and hook them to that little
string Nora fixed across the window. If you really WANT to live
in a rainbow--I don't see but we'll have to have a rainbow for
you to live in!"

Pollyanna had not hung up three of the pendants in the sunlit
window before she saw a little of what was going to happen. She
was so excited then she could scarcely control her shaking
fingers enough to hang up the rest. But at last her task was
finished, and she stepped back with a low cry of delight.

It had become a fairyland--that sumptuous, but dreary bedroom.
Everywhere were bits of dancing red and green, violet and orange,
gold and blue. The wall, the floor, and the furniture, even to
the bed itself, were aflame with shimmering bits of color.

"Oh, oh, oh, how lovely!" breathed Pollyanna; then she laughed
suddenly. "I just reckon the sun himself is trying to play the
game now, don't you?" she cried, forgetting for the moment that
Mr. Pendleton could not know what she was talking about. "Oh, how
I wish I had a lot of those things! How I would like to give them
to Aunt Polly and Mrs. Snow and--lots of folks. I reckon THEN
they'd be glad all right! Why, I think even Aunt Polly'd get so
glad she couldn't help banging doors if she lived in a rainbow
like that. Don't you?"

Mr. Pendleton laughed.

"Well, from my remembrance of your aunt, Miss Pollyanna, I must
say I think it would take something more than a few prisms in the
sunlight to--to make her bang many doors--for gladness. But come,
now, really, what do you mean?"

Pollyanna stared slightly; then she drew a long breath.

"Oh, I forgot. You don't know about the game. I remember now."

"Suppose you tell me, then."

And this time Pollyanna told him. She told him the whole thing
from the very first--from the crutches that should have been a
doll. As she talked, she did not look at his face. Her rapt eyes
were still on the dancing flecks of color from the prism pendants
swaying in the sunlit window.

"And that's all," she sighed, when she had finished. "And now you
know why I said the sun was trying to play it--that game."

For a moment there was silence. Then a low voice from the bed
said unsteadily:

"Perhaps; but I'm thinking that the very finest prism of them all
is yourself, Pollyanna."

"Oh, but I don't show beautiful red and green and purple when the
sun shines through me, Mr. Pendleton!"

"Don't you?" smiled the man. And Pollyanna, looking into his
face, wondered why there were tears in his eyes.

"No," she said. Then, after a minute she added mournfully: "I'm
afraid, Mr. Pendleton, the sun doesn't make anything but freckles
out of me. Aunt Polly says it DOES make them!"

The man laughed a little; and again Pollyanna looked at him: the
laugh had sounded almost like a sob.

CHAPTER XIX. WHICH IS SOMEWHAT SURPRISING

Pollyanna entered school in September. Preliminary examinations
showed that she was well advanced for a girl of her years, and
she was soon a happy member of a class of girls and boys her own
age.

School, in some ways, was a surprise to Pollyanna; and Pollyanna,
certainly, in many ways, was very much of a surprise to school.
They were soon on the best of terms, however, and to her aunt
Pollyanna confessed that going to school WAS living, after
all--though she had had her doubts before.

In spite of her delight in her new work, Pollyanna did not forget
her old friends. True, she could not give them quite so much time
now, of course; but she gave them what time she could. Perhaps
John Pendleton, of them all, however, was the most dissatisfied.

One Saturday afternoon he spoke to her about it.

"See here, Pollyanna, how would you like to come and live with
me?" he asked, a little impatiently. "I don't see anything of you,
nowadays."

Pollyanna laughed--Mr. Pendleton was such a funny man!

"I thought you didn't like to have folks 'round," she said.

He made a wry face.

"Oh, but that was before you taught me to play that wonderful
game of yours. Now I'm glad to be waited on, hand and foot! Never
mind, I'll be on my own two feet yet, one of these days; then
I'll see who steps around," he finished, picking up one of the
crutches at his side and shaking it playfully at the little girl.
They were sitting in the great library to-day.

"Oh, but you aren't really glad at all for things; you just SAY
you are," pouted Pollyanna, her eyes on the dog, dozing before
the fire. "You know you don't play the game right EVER, Mr.
Pendleton--you know you don't!"

The man's face grew suddenly very grave.

"That's why I want you, little girl--to help me play it. Will you
come?"

Pollyanna turned in surprise.

"Mr. Pendleton, you don't really mean--that?"

"But I do. I want you. Will you come?"

Pollyanna looked distressed.

"Why, Mr. Pendleton, I can't--you know I can't. Why, I'm--Aunt
Polly's!"

A quick something crossed the man's face that Pollyanna could not
quite understand. His head came up almost fiercely.

"You're no more hers than--Perhaps she would let you come to me,"
he finished more gently. "Would you come--if she did?"

Pollyanna frowned in deep thought.

"But Aunt Polly has been so--good to me," she began slowly; "and
she took me when I didn't have anybody left but the Ladies' Aid,
and--"

Again that spasm of something crossed the man's face; but this
time, when he spoke, his voice was low and very sad.

"Pollyanna, long years ago I loved somebody very much. I hoped to
bring her, some day, to this house. I pictured how happy we'd be
together in our home all the long years to come."

"Yes," pitied Pollyanna, her eyes shining with sympathy.

"But--well, I didn't bring her here. Never mind why. I just
didn't that's all. And ever since then this great gray pile of
stone has been a house--never a home. It takes a woman's hand and
heart, or a child's presence, to make a home, Pollyanna; and I
have not had either. Now will you come, my dear?"

Pollyanna sprang to her feet. Her face was fairly illumined.

"Mr. Pendleton, you--you mean that you wish you--you had had that
woman's hand and heart all this time?"

"Why, y-yes, Pollyanna."

"Oh, I'm so glad! Then it's all right," sighed the little girl.
"Now you can take us both, and everything will be lovely."

"Take--you--both?" repeated the man, dazedly.

A faint doubt crossed Pollyanna's countenance.

"Well, of course, Aunt Polly isn't won over, yet; but I'm sure
she will be if you tell it to her just as you did to me, and then
we'd both come, of course."

A look of actual terror leaped to the man's eyes.

"Aunt Polly come--HERE!"

Pollyanna's eyes widened a little.

"Would you rather go THERE?" she asked. "Of course the house isn't
quite so pretty, but it's nearer--"

"Pollyanna, what ARE you talking about?" asked the man, very
gently now.

"Why, about where we're going to live, of course," rejoined
Pollyanna, in obvious surprise. "I THOUGHT you meant here, at
first. You said it was here that you had wanted Aunt Polly's hand
and heart all these years to make a home, and--"

An inarticulate cry came from the man's throat. He raised his
hand and began to speak; but the next moment he dropped his hand
nervelessly at his side.

"The doctor, sir," said the maid in the doorway.

Pollyanna rose at once.

John Pendleton turned to her feverishly.

"Pollyanna, for Heaven's sake, say nothing of what I asked
you--yet," he begged, in a low voice. Pollyanna dimpled into a
sunny smile.

"Of course not! Just as if I didn't know you'd rather tell her
yourself!" she called back merrily over her shoulder.

John Pendleton fell limply back in his chair.

"Why, what's up?" demanded the doctor, a minute later, his
fingers on his patient's galloping pulse.

A whimsical smile trembled on John Pendleton's lips.

"Overdose of your--tonic, I guess," he laughed, as he noted the
doctor's eyes following Pollyanna's little figure down the
driveway.

CHAPTER XX. WHICH IS MORE SURPRISING

Sunday mornings Pollyanna usually attended church and Sunday
school. Sunday afternoons she frequently went for a walk with
Nancy. She had planned one for the day after her Saturday
afternoon visit to Mr. John Pendleton; but on the way home from
Sunday school Dr. Chilton overtook her in his gig, and brought
his horse to a stop.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13