Pollyanna

CHAPTER XVI. A RED ROSE AND A LACE SHAWL

It was on a rainy day about a week after Pollyanna's visit to Mr. John Pendleton, that Miss Polly was driven by Timothy to an early afternoon committee meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society. When she returned at three o'clock, her cheeks were a bright, pretty pink, and her hair, blown by the damp wind, had fluffed into kinks and curls wherever the loosened pins had given leave.

Pollyanna had never before seen her aunt look like this.

“Oh—oh—oh! Why, Aunt Polly, you've got 'em, too,” she cried rapturously, dancing round and round her aunt, as that lady entered the sitting room.

“Got what, you impossible child?”

Pollyanna was still revolving round and round her aunt.

“And I never knew you had 'em! Can folks have 'em when you don't know they've got 'em? DO you suppose I could?—'fore I get to Heaven, I mean,” she cried, pulling out with eager fingers the straight locks above her ears. “But then, they wouldn't be black, if they did come. You can't hide the black part.”

“Pollyanna, what does all this mean?” demanded Aunt Polly, hurriedly removing her hat, and trying to smooth back her disordered hair.

“No, no—please, Aunt Polly!” Pollyanna's jubilant voice turned to one of distressed appeal. “Don't smooth 'em out! It's those that I'm talking about—those darling little black curls. Oh, Aunt Polly, they're so pretty!”

“Nonsense! What do you mean, Pollyanna, by going to the Ladies' Aid the other day in that absurd fashion about that beggar boy?”

“But it isn't nonsense,” urged Pollyanna, answering only the first of her aunt's remarks. “You don't know how pretty you look with your hair like that! Oh, Aunt Polly, please, mayn't I do your hair like I did Mrs. Snow's, and put in a flower? I'd so love to see you that way! Why, you'd be ever so much prettier than she was!”

“Pollyanna!” (Miss Polly spoke very sharply—all the more sharply because Pollyanna's words had given her an odd throb of joy: when before had anybody cared how she, or her hair looked? When before had anybody “loved” to see her “pretty”?) “Pollyanna, you did not answer my question. Why did you go to the Ladies' Aid in that absurd fashion?”

“Yes'm, I know; but, please, I didn't know it was absurd until I went and found out they'd rather see their report grow than Jimmy. So then I wrote to MY Ladies' Aiders—'cause Jimmy is far away from them, you know; and I thought maybe he could be their little India boy same as—Aunt Polly, WAS I your little India girl? And, Aunt Polly, you WILL let me do your hair, won't you?”

Aunt Polly put her hand to her throat—the old, helpless feeling was upon her, she knew.

“But, Pollyanna, when the ladies told me this afternoon how you came to them, I was so ashamed! I—”

Pollyanna began to dance up and down lightly on her toes.

“You didn't!—You didn't say I COULDN'T do your hair,” she crowed triumphantly; “and so I'm sure it means just the other way 'round, sort of—like it did the other day about Mr. Pendleton's jelly that you didn't send, but didn't want me to say you didn't send, you know. Now wait just where you are. I'll get a comb.”

“But Pollyanna, Pollyanna,” remonstrated Aunt Polly, following the little girl from the room and panting up-stairs after her.

“Oh, did you come up here?” Pollyanna greeted her at the door of Miss Polly's own room. “That'll be nicer yet! I've got the comb. Now sit down, please, right here. Oh, I'm so glad you let me do it!”

“But, Pollyanna, I—I—”

Miss Polly did not finish her sentence. To her helpless amazement she found herself in the low chair before the dressing table, with her hair already tumbling about her ears under ten eager, but very gentle fingers.

“Oh, my! what pretty hair you've got,” prattled Pollyanna; “and there's so much more of it than Mrs. Snow has, too! But, of course, you need more, anyhow, because you're well and can go to places where folks can see it. My! I reckon folks'll be glad when they do see it—and surprised, too, 'cause you've hid it so long. Why, Aunt Polly, I'll make you so pretty everybody'll just love to look at you!”

“Pollyanna!” gasped a stifled but shocked voice from a veil of hair. “I—I'm sure I don't know why I'm letting you do this silly thing.”

“Why, Aunt Polly, I should think you'd be glad to have folks like to look at you! Don't you like to look at pretty things? I'm ever so much happier when I look at pretty folks, 'cause when I look at the other kind I'm so sorry for them.”

“But—but—”

“And I just love to do folks' hair,” purred Pollyanna, contentedly. “I did quite a lot of the Ladies' Aiders'—but there wasn't any of them so nice as yours. Mrs. White's was pretty nice, though, and she looked just lovely one day when I dressed her up in—Oh, Aunt Polly, I've just happened to think of something! But it's a secret, and I sha'n't tell. Now your hair is almost done, and pretty quick I'm going to leave you just a minute; and you must promise—promise—PROMISE not to stir nor peek, even, till I come back. Now remember!” she finished, as she ran from the room.

Aloud Miss Polly said nothing. To herself she said that of course she should at once undo the absurd work of her niece's fingers, and put her hair up properly again. As for “peeking” just as if she cared how—

At that moment—unaccountably—Miss Polly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror of the dressing table. And what she saw sent such a flush of rosy color to her cheeks that—she only flushed the more at the sight.

She saw a face—not young, it is true—but just now alight with excitement and surprise. The cheeks were a pretty pink. The eyes sparkled. The hair, dark, and still damp from the outdoor air, lay in loose waves about the forehead and curved back over the ears in wonderfully becoming lines, with softening little curls here and there.

So amazed and so absorbed was Miss Polly with what she saw in the glass that she quite forgot her determination to do over her hair, until she heard Pollyanna enter the room again. Before she could move, then, she felt a folded something slipped across her eyes and tied in the back.

“Pollyanna, Pollyanna! What are you doing?” she cried.

Pollyanna chuckled.

“That's just what I don't want you to know, Aunt Polly, and I was afraid you WOULD peek, so I tied on the handkerchief. Now sit still. It won't take but just a minute, then I'll let you see.”

“But, Pollyanna,” began Miss Polly, struggling blindly to her feet, “you must take this off! You—child, child! what ARE you doing?” she gasped, as she felt a soft something slipped about her shoulders.

Pollyanna only chuckled the more gleefully. With trembling fingers she was draping about her aunt's shoulders the fleecy folds of a beautiful lace shawl, yellowed from long years of packing away, and fragrant with lavender. Pollyanna had found the shawl the week before when Nancy had been regulating the attic; and it had occurred to her to-day that there was no reason why her aunt, as well as Mrs. White of her Western home, should not be “dressed up.”

Her task completed, Pollyanna surveyed her work with eyes that approved, but that saw yet one touch wanting. Promptly, therefore, she pulled her aunt toward the sun parlor where she could see a belated red rose blooming on the trellis within reach of her hand.

“Pollyanna, what are you doing? Where are you taking me to?” recoiled Aunt Polly, vainly trying to hold herself back. “Pollyanna, I shall not—”

“It's just to the sun parlor—only a minute! I'll have you ready now quicker'n no time,” panted Pollyanna, reaching for the rose and thrusting it into the soft hair above Miss Polly's left ear. “There!” she exulted, untying the knot of the handkerchief and flinging the bit of linen far from her. “Oh, Aunt Polly, now I reckon you'll be glad I dressed you up!”

For one dazed moment Miss Polly looked at her bedecked self, and at her surroundings; then she gave a low cry and fled to her room. Pollyanna, following the direction of her aunt's last dismayed gaze, saw, through the open windows of the sun parlor, the horse and gig turning into the driveway. She recognized at once the man who held the reins. Delightedly she leaned forward.

“Dr. Chilton, Dr. Chilton! Did you want to see me? I'm up here.”

“Yes,” smiled the doctor, a little gravely. “Will you come down, please?”

In the bedroom Pollyanna found a flushed-faced, angry-eyed woman plucking at the pins that held a lace shawl in place.

“Pollyanna, how could you?” moaned the woman. “To think of your rigging me up like this, and then letting me—BE SEEN!”

Pollyanna stopped in dismay.

“But you looked lovely—perfectly lovely, Aunt Polly; and—”

“'Lovely'!” scorned the woman, flinging the shawl to one side and attacking her hair with shaking fingers.

“Oh, Aunt Polly, please, please let the hair stay!”

“Stay? Like this? As if I would!” And Miss Polly pulled the locks so tightly back that the last curl lay stretched dead at the ends of her fingers.

“O dear! And you did look so pretty,” almost sobbed Pollyanna, as she stumbled through the door.

Down-stairs Pollyanna found the doctor waiting in his gig.

“I've prescribed you for a patient, and he's sent me to get the prescription filled,” announced the doctor. “Will you go?”

“You mean—an errand—to the drug store?” asked Pollyanna, a little uncertainly. “I used to go some—for the Ladies' Aiders.”

The doctor shook his head with a smile.

“Not exactly. It's Mr. John Pendleton. He would like to see you to-day, if you'll be so good as to come. It's stopped raining, so I drove down after you. Will you come? I'll call for you and bring you back before six o'clock.”

“I'd love to!” exclaimed Pollyanna. “Let me ask Aunt Polly.”

In a few moments she returned, hat in hand, but with rather a sober face.

“Didn't—your aunt want you to go?” asked the doctor, a little diffidently, as they drove away.

“Y-yes,” sighed Pollyanna. “She—she wanted me to go TOO much, I'm afraid.”

“Wanted you to go TOO MUCH!”

Pollyanna sighed again.

“Yes. I reckon she meant she didn't want me there. You see, she said: 'Yes, yes, run along, run along—do! I wish you'd gone before.'”

The doctor smiled—but with his lips only. His eyes were very grave. For some time he said nothing; then, a little hesitatingly, he asked:

“Wasn't it—your aunt I saw with you a few minutes ago—in the window of the sun parlor?”

Pollyanna drew a long breath.

“Yes; that's what's the whole trouble, I suppose. You see I'd dressed her up in a perfectly lovely lace shawl I found up-stairs, and I'd fixed her hair and put on a rose, and she looked so pretty. Didn't YOU think she looked just lovely?”

For a moment the doctor did not answer. When he did speak his voice was so low Pollyanna could but just hear the words.

“Yes, Pollyanna, I—I thought she did look—just lovely.”

“Did you? I'm so glad! I'll tell her,” nodded the little girl, contentedly.

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.