Christmas gold, p.368
Christmas Gold, page 368
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
Table of Contents
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.
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.
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