were just beginning to teach me that this summer, but I hadn’t got far. They were more divided up on that than they were on the sewing. They were going to begin on bread; but there wasn’t two of ’em that made it alike, so after arguing it all one sewing-meeting, they decided to take turns at me one forenoon a week – in their own kitchens, you know. I’d only learned chocolate fudge and fig cake, though, when – when I had to stop.” Her voice broke.
“Chocolate fudge and fig cake, indeed!” scorned Miss Polly. “I think we can remedy that very soon.” She paused in thought for a minute, then went on slowly: “At nine o’clock every morning you will read aloud one half-hour to me. Before that you will use the time to put this room in order. Wednesday and Saturday forenoons, after half-past nine, you will spend with Nancy in the kitchen, learning to cook. Other mornings you will sew with me. That will leave the afternoons for your music. I shall, of course, procure a teacher at once for you,” she finished decisively, as she arose from her chair.
Pollyanna cried out in dismay.
“Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven’t left me any time at all just to – to live.”
“To live, child! What do you mean? As if you weren’t living all the time!”
“Oh, of course I’d be breathing all the time I was doing those things, Aunt Polly, but I wouldn’t be living. You breathe all the time you’re asleep, but you aren’t living. I mean living – doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading (to myself, of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr. Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That’s what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn’t living!”
Miss Polly lifted her head irritably.
“Pollyanna, you are the most extraordinary child! You will be allowed a proper amount of playtime, of course. But, surely, it seems to me if I am willing to do my duty in seeing that you have proper care and instruction, you ought to be willing to do yours by seeing that that care and instruction are not ungratefully wasted.”
Pollyanna looked shocked.
“Oh, Aunt Polly, as if I ever could be ungrateful – to you! Why, I love you – and you aren’t even a Ladies’ Aider; you’re an aunt!”
“Very well; then see that you don’t act ungrateful,” vouchsafed Miss Polly, as she turned toward the door.
She had gone halfway down the stairs when a small, unsteady voice called after her:
“Please, Aunt Polly, you didn’t tell me which of my things you wanted to – to give away.”
Aunt Polly emitted a tired sigh – a sigh that ascended straight to Pollyanna’s ears.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Pollyanna. Timothy will drive us into town at half-past one this afternoon. Not one of your garments is fit for my niece to wear. Certainly I should be very far from doing my duty by you if I should let you appear out in any one of them.”
Pollyanna sighed now – she believed she was going to hate that word – duty.
“Aunt Polly, please,” she called wistfully, “isn’t there any way you can be glad about all that – duty business?”
“What?” Miss Polly looked up in dazed surprise; then, suddenly, with very red cheeks, she turned and swept angrily down the stairs. “Don’t be impertinent, Pollyanna!”
In the hot little attic room Pollyanna dropped herself on to one of the straight-backed chairs. To her, existence loomed ahead one endless round of duty.
“I don’t see, really, what there was impertinent about that,” she sighed. “I was only asking her if she couldn’t tell me something to be glad about in all that duty business.”
For several minutes Pollyanna sat in silence, her rueful eyes fixed on the forlorn heap of garments on the bed. Then, slowly, she rose and began to put away the dresses.
“There just isn’t anything to be glad about, that I can see,” she said aloud; “unless – it’s to be glad when the duty’s done!” Whereupon she laughed suddenly.
At half-past one o’clock Timothy drove Miss Polly and her niece to the four or five principal dry goods stores, which were about half a mile from the homestead.
Fitting Pollyanna with a new wardrobe proved to be more or less of an exciting experience for all concerned. Miss Polly came out of it with the feeling of limp relaxation that one might have at finding oneself at last on solid earth after a perilous walk across the very thin crust of a volcano. The various clerks who had waited upon the pair came out of it with very red faces, and enough amusing stories of Pollyanna to keep their friends in gales of laughter the rest of the week. Pollyanna herself came out of it with radiant smiles and a heart content; for, as she expressed it to one of the clerks: “When you haven’t had anybody but missionary barrels and Ladies’ Aiders to dress you, it is perfectly lovely to just walk right in and buy clothes that are brand-new, and that don’t have to be tucked up or let down because they don’t fit!”
The shopping expedition consumed the entire afternoon; then came supper and a delightful talk with Old Tom in the garden, and another with Nancy on the back porch, after the dishes were done, and while Aunt Polly paid a visit to a neighbor.
Old Tom told Pollyanna wonderful things of her mother, that made her very happy indeed; and Nancy told her all about the little farm six miles away at “The Corners,” where lived her own dear mother, and her equally dear brother and sisters. She promised, too, that sometime, if Miss Polly were willing, Pollyanna should be taken to see them.
“And they’ve got lovely names, too. You’ll like their names,” sighed Nancy. “They’re ‘Algernon,’ and ‘Florabelle’and ‘Estelle.’ I—I just hate ‘Nancy’!”
“Oh, Nancy, what a dreadful thing to say! Why?”
“Because it isn’t pretty like the others. You see, I was the first baby, and mother hadn’t begun ter read so many stories with the pretty names in ’em, then.”
“But I love ‘Nancy,’ just because it’s you,” declared Pollyanna.
“Humph! Well, I guess you could love ‘Clarissa Mabelle’ just as well,” retorted Nancy, “and it would be a heap happier for me. I think that name’s just grand!”
Pollyanna laughed.
“Well, anyhow,” she chuckled, “you can be glad it isn’t ‘Hephzibah.’”
“Hephzibah!”
“Yes. Mrs. White’s name is that. Her husband calls her ‘Hep,’ and she doesn’t like it. She says when he calls out ‘Hep—Hep!’ she feels just as if the next minute he was going to yell ‘Hurrah!’
