little girl laughed.
“Maybe. But what I mean is, that legs don’t last—broken ones, you know—like lifelong invalids, same as Mrs. Snow has got. So yours won’t last till doomsday at all. I should think you could be glad of that.”
“Oh, I am,” retorted the man grimly.
“And you didn’t break but one. You can be glad ‘twasn’t two.” Pollyanna was warming to her task.
“Of course! So fortunate,” sniffed the man, with uplifted eyebrows; “looking at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might be glad I wasn’t a centipede and didn’t break fifty!”
Pollyanna chuckled.
“Oh, that’s the best yet,” she crowed. “I know what a centipede is; they’ve got lots of legs. And you can be glad—”
“Oh, of course,” interrupted the man, sharply, all the old bitterness coming back to his voice; “I can be glad, too, for all the rest, I suppose—the nurse, and the doctor, and that confounded woman in the kitchen!”
“Why, yes, sir—only think how bad ‘twould be if you DIDN’T have them!”
“Well, I—eh?” he demanded sharply.
“Why, I say, only think how bad it would be if you didn’t have ‘em—and you lying here like this!”
“As if that wasn’t the very thing that was at the bottom of the whole matter,” retorted the man, testily, “because I am lying here like this! And yet you expect me to say I’m glad because of a fool woman who disarranges the whole house and calls it ‘regulating,’ and a man who aids and abets her in it, and calls it ‘nursing,’ to say nothing of the doctor who eggs ‘em both on—and the whole bunch of them, meanwhile, expecting me to pay them for it, and pay them well, too!”
Pollyanna frowned sympathetically.
“Yes, I know. THAT part is too bad—about the money—when you’ve been saving it, too, all this time.”
“When—eh?”
“Saving it—buying beans and fish balls, you know. Say, DO you like beans?—or do you like turkey better, only on account of the sixty cents?”
“Look a-here, child, what are you talking about?”
Pollyanna smiled radiantly.
“About your money, you know—denying yourself, and saving it for the heathen. You see, I found out about it. Why, Mr. Pendleton, that’s one of the ways I knew you weren’t cross inside. Nancy told me.”
The man’s jaw dropped.
“Nancy told you I was saving money for the—Well, may I inquire who Nancy is?”
“Our Nancy. She works for Aunt Polly.”
“Aunt Polly! Well, who is Aunt Polly?”
“She’s Miss Polly Harrington. I live with her.”
The man made a sudden movement.
“Miss—Polly—Harrington!” he breathed. “You live with—HER!”
“Yes; I’m her niece. She’s taken me to bring up—on account of my mother, you know,” faltered Pollyanna, in a low voice. “She was her sister. And after father—went to be with her and the rest of us in Heaven, there wasn’t any one left for me down here but the Ladies’ Aid; so she took me.”
The man did not answer. His face, as he lay back on the pillow now, was very white—so white that Pollyanna was frightened. She rose uncertainly to her feet.
“I reckon maybe I’d better go now,” she proposed. “I—I hope you’ll like—the jelly.”
The man turned his head suddenly, and opened his eyes. There was a curious longing in their dark depths which even Pollyanna saw, and at which she marvelled.
“And so you are—Miss Polly Harrington’s niece,” he said gently.
“Yes, sir.”
Still the man’s dark eyes lingered on her face, until Pollyanna, feeling vaguely restless, murmured:
“I—I suppose you know—her.”
John Pendleton’s lips curved in an odd smile.
“Oh, yes; I know her.” He hesitated, then went on, still with that curious smile. “But—you don’t mean—you can’t mean that it was Miss Polly Harrington who sent that jelly—to me?” he said slowly.
Pollyanna looked distressed.
“N-no, sir: she didn’t. She said I must be very sure not to let you think she did send it. But I—”
“I thought as much,” vouchsafed the man, shortly, turning away his head. And Pollyanna, still more distressed, tiptoed from the room.
Under the porte-cochere she found the doctor waiting in his gig. The nurse stood on the steps.
“Well, Miss Pollyanna, may I have the pleasure of seeing you home?” asked the doctor smilingly. “I started to drive on a few minutes ago; then it occurred to me that I’d wait for you.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m glad you did. I just love to ride,” beamed Pollyanna, as he reached out his hand to help her in.
“Do you?” smiled the doctor, nodding his head in farewell to the young man on the steps. “Well, as near as I can judge, there are a good many things you ‘love’ to do—eh?” he added, as they drove briskly away.
Pollyanna laughed.
“Why, I don’t know. I reckon perhaps there are,” she admitted. “I like to do ‘most everything that’s LIVING. Of course I don’t like the other things very well—sewing, and reading out loud, and all that. But THEY aren’t LIVING.”
“No? What are they, then?”
“Aunt Polly says they’re ‘learning to live,’” sighed Pollyanna, with a rueful smile.
The doctor smiled now—a little queerly.
“Does she? Well, I should think she might say—just that.”
“Yes,” responded Pollyanna. “But I don’t see it that way at all. I don’t think you have to LEARN how to live. I didn’t, anyhow.”
The doctor drew a long sigh.
“After all, I’m afraid some of us—do have to, little girl,” he said. Then, for a time he was silent. Pollyanna, stealing a glance at his face, felt vaguely sorry for him. He looked so sad. She wished, uneasily, that she could “do something.” It was this, perhaps, that caused her to say in a timid voice:
“Dr. Chilton, I should think being a doctor would, be the very gladdest kind of a business there was.”
The
