"Why, I thought my mother was BEAUTIFUL!" cried Pollyanna, in unconcealed amazement.
John Pendleton smiled quizzically.
"She was, my dear."
Pollyanna looked still more amazed.
"Then I don't see how I CAN be like her!"
The man laughed outright.
"Pollyanna, if some girls had said that, I—well, never mind what I'd say. You little witch!—you poor, homely little Pollyanna!"
Pollyanna flashed a genuinely distressed reproof straight into the man's merry eyes.
"Please, Mr. Pendleton, don't look like that, and don't tease me—about THAT. I'd so LOVE to be beautiful—though of course it sounds silly to say it. And I HAVE a mirror, you know."
"Then I advise you to look in it—when you're talking sometime," observed the man sententiously.
Pollyanna's eyes flew wide open.
"Why, that's just what Jimmy said," she cried.
"Did he, indeed—the young rascal!" retorted John Pendleton, dryly.Then, with one of the curiously abrupt changes of manner peculiar tohim, he said, very low: "You have your mother's eyes and smile,Pollyanna; and to me you are—beautiful."
And Pollyanna, her eyes blinded with sudden hot tears, was silenced.
Dear as were these talks, however, they still were not quite like the talks with Jimmy, to Pollyanna. For that matter, she and Jimmy did not need to TALK to be happy. Jimmy was always so comfortable, and comforting; whether they talked or not did not matter. Jimmy always understood. There was no pulling on her heart-strings for sympathy, with Jimmy—Jimmy was delightfully big, and strong, and happy. Jimmy was not sorrowing for a long-lost nephew, nor pining for the loss of a boyhood sweetheart. Jimmy did not have to swing himself painfully about on a pair of crutches—all of which was so hard to see, and know, and think of. With Jimmy one could be just glad, and happy, and free. Jimmy was such a dear! He always rested one so—did Jimmy!
It was on the last day at camp that it happened. To Pollyanna it seemed such a pity that it should have happened at all, for it was the first cloud to bring a shadow of regret and unhappiness to her heart during the whole trip, and she found herself futilely sighing:
"I wish we'd gone home day before yesterday; then it wouldn't have happened."
But they had not gone home "day before yesterday," and it had happened; and this was the manner of it.
Early in the morning of that last day they had all started on a two-mile tramp to "the Basin."
"We'll have one more bang-up fish dinner before we go," Jimmy had said. And the rest had joyfully agreed.
With luncheon and fishing tackle, therefore, they had made an early start. Laughing and calling gaily to each other they followed the narrow path through the woods, led by Jimmy, who best knew the way.
At first, close behind Jimmy had walked Pollyanna; but gradually she had fallen back with Jamie, who was last in the line: Pollyanna had thought she detected on Jamie's face the expression which she had come to know was there only when he was attempting something that taxed almost to the breaking-point his skill and powers of endurance. She knew that nothing would so offend him as to have her openly notice this state of affairs. At the same time, she also knew that from her, more willingly than from any one else, would he accept an occasional steadying hand over a troublesome log or stone. Therefore, at the first opportunity to make the change without apparent design, she had dropped back step by step until she had reached her goal, Jamie. She had been rewarded instantly in the way Jamie's face brightened, and in the easy assurance with which he met and conquered a fallen tree-trunk across their path, under the pleasant fiction (carefully fostered by Pollyanna) of "helping her across."
Once out of the woods, their way led along an old stone wall for a time, with wide reaches of sunny, sloping pastures on each side, and a more distant picturesque farmhouse. It was in the adjoining pasture that Pollyanna saw the goldenrod which she immediately coveted.
"Jamie, wait! I'm going to get it," she exclaimed eagerly. "It'll make such a beautiful bouquet for our picnic table!" And nimbly she scrambled over the high stone wall and dropped herself down on the other side.
It was strange how tantalizing was that goldenrod. Always just ahead she saw another bunch, and yet another, each a little finer than the one within her reach. With joyous exclamations and gay little calls back to the waiting Jamie, Pollyanna—looking particularly attractive in her scarlet sweater—skipped from bunch to bunch, adding to her store. She had both hands full when there came the hideous bellow of an angry bull, the agonized shout from Jamie, and the sound of hoofs thundering down the hillside.
What happened next was never clear to her. She knew she dropped her goldenrod and ran—ran as she never ran before, ran as she thought she never could run—back toward the wall and Jamie. She knew that behind her the hoof-beats were gaining, gaining, always gaining. Dimly, hopelessly, far ahead of her, she saw Jamie's agonized face, and heard his hoarse cries. Then, from somewhere, came a new voice—Jimmy's—shouting a cheery call of courage.
Still on and on she ran blindly, hearing nearer and nearer the thud of those pounding hoofs. Once she stumbled and almost fell. Then, dizzily she righted herself and plunged forward. She felt her strength quite gone when suddenly, close to her, she heard Jimmy's cheery call again. The next minute she felt herself snatched off her feet and held close to a great throbbing something that dimly she realized was Jimmy's heart. It was all a horrid blur then of cries, hot, panting breaths, and pounding hoofs thundering nearer, ever nearer. Then, just as she knew those hoofs to be almost upon her, she felt herself flung, still in Jimmy's arms, sharply to one side, and yet not so far but that she still could feel the hot breath of the maddened animal as he dashed by. Almost at once then she found herself on the other side of the wall, with Jimmy bending over her, imploring her to tell him she was not dead.
With an hysterical laugh that was yet half a sob, she struggled out of his arms and stood upon her feet.
"Dead? No, indeed—thanks to you, Jimmy. I'm all right. I'm all right. Oh, how glad, glad, glad I was to hear your voice! Oh, that was splendid! How did you do it?" she panted.
"Pooh! That was nothing. I just—" An inarticulate choking cry brought his words to a sudden halt. He turned to find Jamie face down on the ground, a little distance away. Pollyanna was already hurrying toward him.
"Jamie, Jamie, what is the matter?" she cried. "Did you fall? Are you hurt?"
There was no answer.
"What is it, old fellow? ARE you hurt?" demanded Jimmy.
Still there was no answer. Then, suddenly, Jamie pulled himself half upright and turned. They saw his face then, and fell back, shocked and amazed.
"Hurt? Am I hurt?" he choked huskily, flinging out both his hands. "Don't you suppose it hurts to see a thing like that and not be able to do anything? To be tied, helpless, to a pair of sticks? I tell you there's no hurt in all the world to equal it!"
"But—but—Jamie," faltered Pollyanna.
"Don't!" interrupted the cripple, almost harshly. He had struggled to his feet now. "Don't say—anything. I didn't mean to make a scene—like this," he finished brokenly, as he turned and swung back along the narrow path that led to the camp.
For a minute, as if transfixed, the two behind him watched him go.
"Well, by—Jove!" breathed Jimmy, then, in a voice that shook a little, "That was—tough on him!"
"And I didn't think, and PRAISED you, right before him," half-sobbed Pollyanna. "And his hands—did you see them? They were—BLEEDING where the nails had cut right into the flesh," she finished, as she turned and stumbled blindly up the path.
"But, Pollyanna, w-where are you going?" cried Jimmy.
"I'm going to Jamie, of course! Do you think I'd leave him like that?Come, we must get him to come back."
And Jimmy, with a sigh that was not all for Jamie, went.
Outwardly the camping trip was pronounced a great success; but inwardly—
Pollyanna wondered sometimes if it were all herself, or if there really were a peculiar, indefinable constraint in everybody with everybody else. Certainly she felt it, and she thought she saw evidences that the others felt it, too. As for the cause of it all—unhesitatingly she attributed it to that last day at camp with its unfortunate trip to the Basin.
To be sure, she and Jimmy had easily caught up with Jamie, and had, after considerable coaxing, persuaded him to turn about and go on to the Basin with them. But, in spite of everybody's very evident efforts to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, nobody really succeeded in doing so. Pollyanna, Jamie, and Jimmy overdid their gayety a bit, perhaps; and the others, while not knowing exactly what had happened, very evidently felt that something was not quite right, though they plainly tried to hide the fact that they did feel so. Naturally, in this state of affairs, restful happiness was out of the question. Even the anticipated fish dinner was flavorless; and early in the afternoon the start was made back to the camp.
Once home again, Pollyanna had hoped that the unhappy episode of the angry bull would be forgotten. But she could not forget it, so in all fairness she could not blame the others if they could not. Always she thought of it now when she looked at Jamie. She saw again the agony on his face, the crimson stain on the palms of his hands. Her heart ached for him, and because it did so ache, his mere presence had come to be a pain to her. Remorsefully she confessed to herself that she did not like to be with Jamie now, nor to talk with him—but that did not mean that she was not often with him. She was with him, indeed, much oftener than before, for so remorseful was she, and so fearful was she that he would detect her unhappy frame of mind, that she lost no opportunity of responding to his overtures of comradeship; and sometimes she deliberately sought him out. This last she did not often have to do, however, for more and more frequently these days Jamie seemed to be turning to her for companionship.
The reason for this, Pollyanna believed, was to be found in this same incident of the bull and the rescue. Not that Jamie ever referred to it directly. He never did that. He was, too, even gayer than usual; but Pollyanna thought she detected sometimes a bitterness underneath it all that was never there before. Certainly she could not help seeing that at times he seemed almost to want to avoid the others, and that he actually sighed, as if with relief, when he found himself alone with her. She thought she knew why this was so, after he said to her, as he did say one day, while they were watching the others play tennis:
"You see, after all, Pollyanna, there isn't any one who can quite understand as you can."
"'Understand'?" Pollyanna had not known what he meant at first. They had been watching the players for five minutes without a word between them.
"Yes; for you, once—couldn't walk—yourself."
"Oh-h, yes, I know," faltered Pollyanna; and she knew that her great distress must have shown in her face, for so quickly and so blithely did he change the subject, after a laughing:
"Come, come, Pollyanna, why don't you tell me to play the game? I would if I were in your place. Forget it, please. I was a brute to make you look like that!"
And Pollyanna smiled, and said: "No, no—no, indeed!" But she did not "forget it." She could not. And it all made her only the more anxious to be with Jamie and help him all she could.
"As if NOW I'd ever let him see that I was ever anything but glad when he was with me!" she thought fervently, as she hurried forward a minute later to take her turn in the game.
Pollyanna, however, was not the only one in the party who felt a new awkwardness and constraint. Jimmy Pendleton felt it, though he, too, tried not to show it.
Jimmy was not happy these days. From a care-free youth whose visions were of wonderful spans across hitherto unbridgeable chasms, he has come to be an anxious-eyed young man whose visions were of a feared rival bearing away the girl he loved.
Jimmy knew very well now that he was in love with Pollyanna. He suspected that he had been in love with her for some time. He stood aghast, indeed, to find himself so shaken and powerless before this thing that had come to him. He knew that even his beloved bridges were as nothing when weighed against the smile in a girl's eyes and the word on a girl's lips. He realized that the most wonderful span in the world to him would be the thing that could help him to cross the chasm of fear and doubt that he felt lay between him and Pollyanna—doubt because of Pollyanna; fear because of Jamie.
Not until he had seen Pollyanna in jeopardy that day in the pasture had he realized how empty would be the world—his world—without her. Not until his wild dash for safety with Pollyanna in his arms had he realized how precious she was to him. For a moment, indeed, with his arms about her, and hers clinging about his neck, he had felt that she was indeed his; and even in that supreme moment of danger he knew the thrill of supreme bliss. Then, a little later, he had seen Jamie's face, and Jamie's hands. To him they could mean but one thing: Jamie, too, loved Pollyanna, and Jamie had to stand by, helpless—"tied to two sticks." That was what he had said. Jimmy believed that, had he himself been obliged to stand by helpless, "tied to two sticks," while another rescued the girl that he loved, he would have looked like that.
Jimmy had gone back to camp that day with his thoughts in a turmoil of fear and rebellion. He wondered if Pollyanna cared for Jamie; that was where the fear came in. But even if she did care, a little, must he stand aside, weakly, and let Jamie, without a struggle, make her learn to care more? That was where the rebellion came in. Indeed, no, he would not do it, decided Jimmy. It should be a fair fight between them.
Then, all by himself as he was, Jimmy flushed hot to the roots of his hair. Would it be a "fair" fight? Could any fight between him and Jamie be a "fair" fight? Jimmy felt suddenly as he had felt years before when, as a lad, he had challenged a new boy to a fight for an apple they both claimed, then, at the first blow, had discovered that the new boy had a crippled arm. He had purposely lost then, of course, and had let the crippled boy win. But he told himself fiercely now that this case was different. It was no apple that was at stake. It was his life's happiness. It might even be Pollyanna's life's happiness, too. Perhaps she did not care for Jamie at all, but would care for her old friend, Jimmy, if he but once showed her he wanted her to care. And he would show her. He would—
Once again Jimmy blushed hotly. But he frowned, too, angrily: if only he COULD forget how Jamie had looked when he had uttered that moaning "tied to two sticks!" If only—But what was the use? It was NOT a fair fight, and he knew it. He knew, too, right there and then, that his decision would be just what it afterwards proved to be: he would watch and wait. He would give Jamie his chance; and if Pollyanna showed that she cared, he would take himself off and away quite out of their lives; and they should never know, either of them, how bitterly he was suffering. He would go back to his bridges—as if any bridge, though it led to the moon itself, could compare for a moment with Pollyanna! But he would do it. He must do it.
It was all very fine and heroic, and Jimmy felt so exalted he was atingle with something that was almost happiness when he finally dropped off to sleep that night. But martyrdom in theory and practice differs woefully, as would-be martyrs have found out from time immemorial. It was all very well to decide alone and in the dark that he would give Jamie his chance; but it was quite another matter really to do it when it involved nothing less than the leaving of Pollyanna and Jamie together almost every time he saw them. Then, too, he was very much worried at Pollyanna's apparent attitude toward the lame youth. It looked very much to Jimmy as if she did indeed care for him, so watchful was she of his comfort, so apparently eager to be with him. Then, as if to settle any possible doubt in Jimmy's mind, there came the day when Sadie Dean had something to say on the subject.
They were all out in the tennis court. Sadie was sitting alone whenJimmy strolled up to her.
"You next with Pollyanna, isn't it?" he queried.
She shook her head.
"Pollyanna isn't playing any more this morning."
"Isn't playing!" frowned Jimmy, who had been counting on his own game with Pollyanna. "Why not?"
For a brief minute Sadie Dean did not answer; then with very evident difficulty she said:
"Pollyanna told me last night that she thought we were playing tennis too much; that it wasn't kind to—Mr. Carew, as long as he can't play."
"I know; but—" Jimmy stopped helplessly, the frown plowing a deeper furrow into his forehead. The next instant he fairly started with surprise at the tense something in Sadie Dean's voice, as she said:
"But he doesn't want her to stop. He doesn't want any one of us to make any difference—for him. It's that that hurts him so. She doesn't understand. She doesn't understand! But I do. She thinks she does, though!"
Something in words or manner sent a sudden pang to Jimmy's heart. He threw a sharp look into her face. A question flew to his lips. For a moment he held it back; then, trying to hide his earnestness with a bantering smile, he let it come.
"Why, Miss Dean, you don't mean to convey the idea that—that there's any SPECIAL interest in each other—between those two, do you?"
She gave him a scornful glance.
"Where have your eyes been? She worships him! I mean—they worship each other," she corrected hastily.
Jimmy, with an inarticulate ejaculation, turned and walked away abruptly. He could not trust himself to remain longer. He did not wish to talk any more, just then, to Sadie Dean. So abruptly, indeed, did he turn, that he did not notice that Sadie Dean, too, turned hurriedly, and busied herself looking in the grass at her feet, as if she had lost something. Very evidently, Sadie Dean, also, did not wish to talk any more just then.
Jimmy Pendleton told himself that it was not true at all; that it was all falderal, what Sadie Dean had said. Yet nevertheless, true or not true, he could not forget it. It colored all his thoughts thereafter, and loomed before his eyes like a shadow whenever he saw Pollyanna and Jamie together. He watched their faces covertly. He listened to the tones of their voices. He came then, in time, to think it was, after all, true: that they did worship each other; and his heart, in consequence, grew like lead within him. True to his promise to himself, however, he turned resolutely away. The die was cast, he told himself. Pollyanna was not to be for him.
Restless days for Jimmy followed. To stay away from the Harrington homestead entirely he did not dare, lest his secret be suspected. To be with Pollyanna at all now was torture. Even to be with Sadie Dean was unpleasant, for he could not forget that it was Sadie Dean who had finally opened his eyes. Jamie, certainly, was no haven of refuge, under the circumstances; and that left only Mrs. Carew. Mrs. Carew, however, was a host in herself, and Jimmy found his only comfort these days in her society. Gay or grave, she always seemed to know how to fit his mood exactly; and it was wonderful how much she knew about bridges—the kind of bridges he was going to build. She was so wise, too, and so sympathetic, knowing always just the right word to say. He even one day almost told her about The Packet; but John Pendleton interrupted them at just the wrong moment, so the story was not told. John Pendleton was always interrupting them at just the wrong moment, Jimmy thought vexedly, sometimes. Then, when he remembered what John Pendleton had done for him, he was ashamed.
"The Packet" was a thing that dated back to Jimmy's boyhood, and had never been mentioned to any one save to John Pendleton, and that only once, at the time of his adoption. The Packet was nothing but rather a large white envelope, worn with time, and plump with mystery behind a huge red seal. It had been given him by his father, and it bore the following instructions in his father's hand:
"To my boy, Jimmy. Not to be opened until his thirtieth birthday except in case of his death, when it shall be opened at once."
There were times when Jimmy speculated a good deal as to the contents of that envelope. There were other times when he forgot its existence. In the old days, at the Orphans' Home, his chief terror had been that it should be discovered and taken away from him. In those days he wore it always hidden in the lining of his coat. Of late years, at John Pendleton's suggestion, it had been tucked away in the Pendleton safe.
"For there's no knowing how valuable it may be," John Pendleton had said, with a smile. "And, anyway, your father evidently wanted you to have it, and we wouldn't want to run the risk of losing it."
"No, I wouldn't want to lose it, of course," Jimmy had smiled back, a little soberly. "But I'm not counting on its being real valuable, sir. Poor dad didn't have anything that was very valuable about him, as I remember."
It was this Packet that Jimmy came so near mentioning to Mrs. Carew one day,—if only John Pendleton had not interrupted them.
"Still, maybe it's just as well I didn't tell her about it," Jimmy reflected afterwards, on his way home. "She might have thought dad had something in his life that wasn't quite—right. And I wouldn't have wanted her to think that—of dad."
Before the middle of September the Carews and Sadie Dean said good-by and went back to Boston. Much as she knew she would miss them, Pollyanna drew an actual sigh of relief as the train bearing them away rolled out of the Beldingsville station. Pollyanna would not have admitted having this feeling of relief to any one else, and even to herself she apologized in her thoughts.
"It isn't that I don't love them dearly, every one of them," she sighed, watching the train disappear around the curve far down the track. "It's only that—that I'm so sorry for poor Jamie all the time; and—and—I am tired. I shall be glad, for a while, just to go back to the old quiet days with Jimmy."
Pollyanna, however, did not go back to the old quiet days with Jimmy. The days that immediately followed the going of the Carews were quiet, certainly, but they were not passed "with Jimmy." Jimmy rarely came near the house now, and when he did call, he was not the old Jimmy that she used to know. He was moody, restless, and silent, or else very gay and talkative in a nervous fashion that was most puzzling and annoying. Before long, too, he himself went to Boston; and then of course she did not see him at all.
Pollyanna was surprised then to see how much she missed him. Even to know that he was in town, and that there was a chance that he might come over, was better than the dreary emptiness of certain absence; and even his puzzling moods of alternating gloominess and gayety were preferable to this utter silence of nothingness. Then, one day, suddenly she pulled herself up with hot cheeks and shamed eyes.
"Well, Pollyanna Whittier," she upbraided herself sharply, "one would think you were in LOVE with Jimmy Bean Pendleton! Can't you think of ANYTHING but him?"
Whereupon, forthwith, she bestirred herself to be very gay and lively indeed, and to put this Jimmy Bean Pendleton out of her thoughts. As it happened, Aunt Polly, though unwittingly, helped her to this.
With the going of the Carews had gone also their chief source of immediate income, and Aunt Polly was beginning to worry again, audibly, about the state of their finances.
"I don't know, really, Pollyanna, what IS going to become of us," she would moan frequently. "Of course we are a little ahead now from this summer's work, and we have a small sum from the estate right along; but I never know how soon that's going to stop, like all the rest. If only we could do something to bring in some ready cash!"
It was after one of these moaning lamentations one day that Pollyanna's eyes chanced to fall on a prize-story contest offer. It was a most alluring one. The prizes were large and numerous. The conditions were set forth in glowing terms. To read it, one would think that to win out were the easiest thing in the world. It contained even a special appeal that might have been framed for Pollyanna herself.
"This is for you—you who read this," it ran. "What if you never have written a story before! That is no sign you cannot write one. Try it. That's all. Wouldn't YOU like three thousand dollars? Two thousand? One thousand? Five hundred, or even one hundred? Then why not go after it?"
"The very thing!" cried Pollyanna, clapping her hands. "I'm so glad I saw it! And it says I can do it, too. I thought I could, if I'd just try. I'll go tell auntie, so she needn't worry any more."
Pollyanna was on her feet and half way to the door when a second thought brought her steps to a pause.
"Come to think of it, I reckon I won't, after all. It'll be all the nicer to surprise her; and if I SHOULD get the first one—!"
Pollyanna went to sleep that night planning what she COULD do with that three thousand dollars.
Pollyanna began her story the next day. That is, she, with a very important air, got out a quantity of paper, sharpened up half-a-dozen pencils, and established herself at the big old-fashioned Harrington desk in the living-room. After biting restlessly at the ends of two of her pencils, she wrote down three words on the fair white page before her. Then she drew a long sigh, threw aside the second ruined pencil, and picked up a slender green one with a beautiful point. This point she eyed with a meditative frown.
"O dear! I wonder WHERE they get their titles," she despaired. "Maybe, though, I ought to decide on the story first, and then make a title to fit. Anyhow, I'M going to do it." And forthwith she drew a black line through the three words and poised the pencil for a fresh start.
The start was not made at once, however. Even when it was made, it must have been a false one, for at the end of half an hour the whole page was nothing but a jumble of scratched-out lines, with only a few words here and there left to tell the tale.
At this juncture Aunt Polly came into the room. She turned tired eyes upon her niece.
"Well, Pollyanna, what ARE you up to now?" she demanded.
Pollyanna laughed and colored guiltily.
"Nothing much, auntie. Anyhow, it doesn't look as if it were much—yet," she admitted, with a rueful smile. "Besides, it's a secret, and I'm not going to tell it yet."
"Very well; suit yourself," sighed Aunt Polly. "But I can tell you right now that if you're trying to make anything different out of those mortgage papers Mr. Hart left, it's useless. I've been all over them myself twice."
"No, dear, it isn't the papers. It's a whole heap nicer than any papers ever could be," crowed Pollyanna triumphantly, turning back to her work. In Pollyanna's eyes suddenly had risen a glowing vision of what it might be, with that three thousand dollars once hers.
For still another half-hour Pollyanna wrote and scratched, and chewed her pencils; then, with her courage dulled, but not destroyed, she gathered up her papers and pencils and left the room.
"I reckon maybe I'll do better by myself up-stairs," she was thinking as she hurried through the hall. "I THOUGHT I ought to do it at a desk—being literary work, so—but anyhow, the desk didn't help me any this morning. I'll try the window seat in my room."
The window seat, however, proved to be no more inspiring, judging by the scratched and re-scratched pages that fell from Pollyanna's hands; and at the end of another half-hour Pollyanna discovered suddenly that it was time to get dinner.
"Well, I'm glad 'tis, anyhow," she sighed to herself. "I'd a lot rather get dinner than do this. Not but that I WANT to do this, of course; only I'd no idea 'twas such an awful job—just a story, so!"
During the following month Pollyanna worked faithfully, doggedly, but she soon found that "just a story, so" was indeed no small matter to accomplish. Pollyanna, however, was not one to set her hand to the plow and look back. Besides, there was that three-thousand-dollar prize, or even any of the others, if she should not happen to win the first one! Of course even one hundred dollars was something! So day after day she wrote and erased, and rewrote, until finally the story, such as it was, lay completed before her. Then, with some misgivings, it must be confessed, she took the manuscript to Milly Snow to be typewritten.
"It reads all right—that is, it makes sense," mused Pollyanna doubtfully, as she hurried along toward the Snow cottage; "and it's a real nice story about a perfectly lovely girl. But there's something somewhere that isn't quite right about it, I'm afraid. Anyhow, I don't believe I'd better count too much on the first prize; then I won't be too much disappointed when I get one of the littler ones."
Pollyanna always thought of Jimmy when she went to the Snows', for it was at the side of the road near their cottage that she had first seen him as a forlorn little runaway lad from the Orphans' Home years before. She thought of him again to-day, with a little catch of her breath. Then, with the proud lifting of her head that always came now with the second thought of Jimmy, she hurried up the Snows' doorsteps and rang the bell.
As was usually the case, the Snows had nothing but the warmest of welcomes for Pollyanna; and also as usual it was not long before they were talking of the game: in no home in Beldingsville was the glad game more ardently played than in the Snows'.
"Well, and how are you getting along?" asked Pollyanna, when she had finished the business part of her call.
"Splendidly!" beamed Milly Snow. "This is the third job I've got this week. Oh, Miss Pollyanna, I'm so glad you had me take up typewriting, for you see I CAN do that right at home! And it's all owing to you."
"Nonsense!" disclaimed Pollyanna, merrily.
"But it is. In the first place, I couldn't have done it anyway if it hadn't been for the game—making mother so much better, you know, that I had some time to myself. And then, at the very first, you suggested typewriting, and helped me to buy a machine. I should like to know if that doesn't come pretty near owing it all to you!"
But once again Pollyanna objected. This time she was interrupted by Mrs. Snow from her wheel chair by the window. And so earnestly and gravely did Mrs. Snow speak, that Pollyanna, in spite of herself, could but hear what she had to say.
"Listen, child, I don't think you know quite what you've done. But I wish you could! There's a little look in your eyes, my dear, to-day, that I don't like to see there. You are plagued and worried over something, I know. I can see it. And I don't wonder: your uncle's death, your aunt's condition, everything—I won't say more about that. But there's something I do want to say, my dear, and you must let me say it, for I can't bear to see that shadow in your eyes without trying to drive it away by telling you what you've done for me, for this whole town, and for countless other people everywhere."
"MRS. SNOW!" protested Pollyanna, in genuine distress.
"Oh, I mean it, and I know what I'm talking about," nodded the invalid, triumphantly. "To begin with, look at me. Didn't you find me a fretful, whining creature who never by any chance wanted what she had until she found what she didn't have? And didn't you open my eyes by bringing me three kinds of things so I'd HAVE to have what I wanted, for once?"
"Oh, Mrs. Snow, was I really ever quite so—impertinent as that?" murmured Pollyanna, with a painful blush.
"It wasn't impertinent," objected Mrs. Snow, stoutly. "You didn't MEAN it as impertinence—and that made all the difference in the world. You didn't preach, either, my dear. If you had, you'd never have got me to playing the game, nor anybody else, I fancy. But you did get me to playing it—and see what it's done for me, and for Milly! Here I am so much better that I can sit in a wheel chair and go anywhere on this floor in it. That means a whole lot when it comes to waiting on yourself, and giving those around you a chance to breathe—meaning Milly, in this case. And the doctor says it's all owing to the game. Then there's others, quantities of others, right in this town, that I'm hearing of all the time. Nellie Mahoney broke her wrist and was so glad it wasn't her leg that she didn't mind the wrist at all. Old Mrs. Tibbits has lost her hearing, but she's so glad 'tisn't her eyesight that she's actually happy. Do you remember cross-eyed Joe that they used to call Cross Joe, be cause of his temper? Nothing went to suit him either, any more than it did me. Well, somebody's taught him the game, they say, and made a different man of him. And listen, dear. It's not only this town, but other places. I had a letter yesterday from my cousin in Massachusetts, and she told me all about Mrs. Tom Payson that used to live here. Do you remember them? They lived on the way up Pendleton Hill."
"Yes, oh, yes, I remember them," cried Pollyanna.
"Well, they left here that winter you were in the Sanatorium and went to Massachusetts where my sister lives. She knows them well. She says Mrs. Payson told her all about you, and how your glad game actually saved them from a divorce. And now not only do they play it themselves, but they've got quite a lot of others playing it down there, and THEY'RE getting still others. So you see, dear, there's no telling where that glad game of yours is going to stop. I wanted you to know. I thought it might help—even you to play the game sometimes; for don't think I don't understand, dearie, that it IS hard for you to play your own game—sometimes."
Pollyanna rose to her feet. She smiled, but her eyes glistened with tears, as she held out her hand in good-by.
"Thank you, Mrs. Snow," she said unsteadily. "It IS hard—sometimes; and maybe I DID need a little help about my own game. But, anyhow, now—" her eyes flashed with their old merriment—"if any time I think I can't play the game myself I can remember that I can still always be GLAD there are some folks playing it!"
Pollyanna walked home a little soberly that afternoon. Touched as she was by what Mrs. Snow had said, there was yet an undercurrent of sadness in it all. She was thinking of Aunt Polly—Aunt Polly who played the game now so seldom; and she was wondering if she herself always played it, when she might.
"Maybe I haven't been careful, always, to hunt up the glad side of the things Aunt Polly says," she thought with undefined guiltiness; "and maybe if I played the game better myself, Aunt Polly would play it—a little. Anyhow I'm going to try. If I don't look out, all these other people will be playing my own game better than I am myself!"
It was just a week before Christmas that Pollyanna sent her story (now neatly typewritten) in for the contest. The prize-winners would not be announced until April, the magazine notice said, so Pollyanna settled herself for the long wait with characteristic, philosophical patience.
"I don't know, anyhow, but I'm glad 'tis so long," she told herself, "for all winter I can have the fun of thinking it may be the first one instead of one of the others, that I'll get. I might just as well think I'm going to get it, then if I do get it, I won't have been unhappy any. While if I don't get it—I won't have had all these weeks of unhappiness beforehand, anyway; and I can be glad for one of the smaller ones, then." That she might not get any prize was not in Pollyanna's calculations at all. The story, so beautifully typed by Milly Snow, looked almost as good as printed already—to Pollyanna.
Christmas was not a happy time at the Harrington homestead that year, in spite of Pollyanna's strenuous efforts to make it so. Aunt Polly refused absolutely to allow any sort of celebration of the day, and made her attitude so unmistakably plain that Pollyanna could not give even the simplest of presents.
Christmas evening John Pendleton called. Mrs. Chilton excused herself, but Pollyanna, utterly worn out from a long day with her aunt, welcomed him joyously. But even here she found a fly in the amber of her content; for John Pendleton had brought with him a letter from Jimmy, and the letter was full of nothing but the plans he and Mrs. Carew were making for a wonderful Christmas celebration at the Home for Working Girls: and Pollyanna, ashamed though she was to own it to herself, was not in a mood to hear about Christmas celebrations just then—least of all, Jimmy's.
John Pendleton, however, was not ready to let the subject drop, even when the letter had been read.
"Great doings—those!" he exclaimed, as he folded the letter.
"Yes, indeed; fine!" murmured Pollyanna, trying to speak with due enthusiasm.
"And it's to-night, too, isn't it? I'd like to drop in on them about now."
"Yes," murmured Pollyanna again, with still more careful enthusiasm.
"Mrs. Carew knew what she was about when she got Jimmy to help her, I fancy," chuckled the man. "But I'm wondering how Jimmy likes it—playing Santa Claus to half a hundred young women at once!"
"Why, he finds it delightful, of course!" Pollyanna lifted her chin ever so slightly.
"Maybe. Still, it's a little different from learning to build bridges, you must confess."
"Oh, yes."
"But I'll risk Jimmy, and I'll risk wagering that those girls never had a better time than he'll give them to-night, too."
"Y-yes, of course," stammered Pollyanna, trying to keep the hated tremulousness out of her voice, and trying very hard NOT to compare her own dreary evening in Beldingsville with nobody but John Pendleton to that of those fifty girls in Boston—with Jimmy.
There was a brief pause, during which John Pendleton gazed dreamily at the dancing fire on the hearth.
"She's a wonderful woman—Mrs. Carew is," he said at last.
"She is, indeed!" This time the enthusiasm in Pollyanna's voice was all pure gold.
"Jimmy's written me before something of what she's done for those girls," went on the man, still gazing into the fire. "In just the last letter before this he wrote a lot about it, and about her. He said he always admired her, but never so much as now, when he can see what she really is."
"She's a dear—that's what Mrs. Carew is," declared Pollyanna, warmly."She's a dear in every way, and I love her."
John Pendleton stirred suddenly. He turned to Pollyanna with an oddly whimsical look in his eyes.
"I know you do, my dear. For that matter, there may be others, too—that love her."
Pollyanna's heart skipped a beat. A sudden thought came to her with stunning, blinding force. JIMMY! Could John Pendleton be meaning that Jimmy cared THAT WAY—for Mrs. Carew?
"You mean—?" she faltered. She could not finish.
With a nervous twitch peculiar to him, John Pendleton got to his feet.
"I mean—the girls, of course," he answered lightly, still with that whimsical smile. "Don't you suppose those fifty girls—love her 'most to death?"
Pollyanna said "yes, of course," and murmured something else appropriate, in answer to John Pendleton's next remark. But her thoughts were in a tumult, and she let the man do most of the talking for the rest of the evening.
Nor did John Pendleton seem averse to this. Restlessly he took a turn or two about the room, then sat down in his old place. And when he spoke, it was on his old subject, Mrs. Carew.
"Queer—about that Jamie of hers, isn't it? I wonder if he IS her nephew."
As Pollyanna did not answer, the man went on, after a moment's silence.
"He's a fine fellow, anyway. I like him. There's something fine and genuine about him. She's bound up in him. That's plain to be seen, whether he's really her kin or not."
There was—another pause, then, in a slightly altered voice, JohnPendleton said:
"Still it's queer, too, when you come to think of it, that she never—married again. She is certainly now—a very beautiful woman. Don't you think so?"
"Yes—yes, indeed she is," plunged in Pollyanna, with precipitate haste; "a—a very beautiful woman."
There was a little break at the last in Pollyanna's voice. Pollyanna, just then, had caught sight of her own face in the mirror opposite—and Pollyanna to herself was never "a very beautiful woman."
On and on rambled John Pendleton, musingly, contentedly, his eyes on the fire. Whether he was answered or not seemed not to disturb him. Whether he was even listened to or not, he seemed hardly to know. He wanted, apparently, only to talk; but at last he got to his feet reluctantly and said good-night.
For a weary half-hour Pollyanna had been longing for him to go, that she might be alone; but after he had gone she wished he were back. She had found suddenly that she did not want to be alone—with her thoughts.
It was wonderfully clear to Pollyanna now. There was no doubt of it.Jimmy cared for Mrs. Carew. That was why he was so moody and restlessafter she left. That was why he had come so seldom to see her,Pollyanna, his old friend. That was why—
Countless little circumstances of the past summer flocked toPollyanna's memory now, mute witnesses that would not be denied.
And why should he not care for her? Mrs. Carew was certainly beautiful and charming. True, she was older than Jimmy; but young men had married women far older than she, many times. And if they loved each other—
Pollyanna cried herself to sleep that night.
In the morning, bravely she tried to face the thing. She even tried, with a tearful smile, to put it to the test of the glad game. She was reminded then of something Nancy had said to her years before: "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!"
"Not that we're 'quarrelling,' or even 'lovers,'" thought Pollyanna blushingly; "but just the same I can be glad HE'S glad, and glad SHE'S glad, too, only—" Even to herself Pollyanna could not finish this sentence.
Being so sure now that Jimmy and Mrs. Carew cared for each other, Pollyanna became peculiarly sensitive to everything that tended to strengthen that belief. And being ever on the watch for it, she found it, as was to be expected. First in Mrs. Carew's letters.
"I am seeing a lot of your friend, young Pendleton," Mrs. Carew wrote one day; "and I'm liking him more and more. I do wish, however—just for curiosity's sake—that I could trace to its source that elusive feeling that I've seen him before somewhere."
Frequently, after this, she mentioned him casually; and, to Pollyanna, in the very casualness of these references lay their sharpest sting; for it showed so unmistakably that Jimmy and Jimmy's presence were now to Mrs. Carew a matter of course. From other sources, too, Pollyanna found fuel for the fire of her suspicions. More and more frequently John Pendleton "dropped in" with his stories of Jimmy, and of what Jimmy was doing; and always here there was mention of Mrs. Carew. Poor Pollyanna wondered, indeed, sometimes, if John Pendleton could not talk of anything—but Mrs. Carew and Jimmy, so constantly was one or the other of those names on his lips.
There were Sadie Dean's letters, too, and they told of Jimmy, and of what he was doing to help Mrs. Carew. Even Jamie, who wrote occasionally, had his mite to add, for he wrote one evening:
"It's ten o'clock. I'm sitting here alone waiting for Mrs. Carew to come home. She and Pendleton have been to one of their usual socials down to the Home."
From Jimmy himself Pollyanna heard very rarely; and for that she told herself mournfully that she COULD be GLAD.
"For if he can't write about ANYTHING but Mrs. Carew and those girls,I'm glad he doesn't write very often!" she sighed.
And so one by one the winter days passed. January and February slipped away in snow and sleet, and March came in with a gale that whistled and moaned around the old house, and set loose blinds to swinging and loose gates to creaking in a way that was most trying to nerves already stretched to the breaking point.
Pollyanna was not finding it very easy these days to play the game, but she was playing it faithfully, valiantly. Aunt Polly was not playing it at all—which certainly did not make it any the easier for Pollyanna to play it. Aunt Polly was blue and discouraged. She was not well, too, and she had plainly abandoned herself to utter gloom.
Pollyanna still was counting on the prize contest. She had dropped from the first prize to one of the smaller ones, however: Pollyanna had been writing more stories, and the regularity with which they came back from their pilgrimages to magazine editors was beginning to shake her faith in her success as an author.
"Oh, well, I can be glad that Aunt Polly doesn't know anything about it, anyway," declared Pollyanna to herself bravely, as she twisted in her fingers the "declined-with-thanks" slip that had just towed in one more shipwrecked story. "She CAN'T worry about this—she doesn't know about it!"
All of Pollyanna's life these days revolved around Aunt Polly, and it is doubtful if even Aunt Polly herself realized how exacting she had become, and how entirely her niece was giving up her life to her.
It was on a particularly gloomy day in March that matters came, in a way, to a climax. Pollyanna, upon arising, had looked at the sky with a sigh—Aunt Polly was always more difficult on cloudy days. With a gay little song, however, that still sounded a bit forced—Pollyanna descended to the kitchen and began to prepare breakfast.
"I reckon I'll make corn muffins," she told the stove confidentially; "then maybe Aunt Polly won't mind—other things so much."
Half an hour later she tapped at her aunt's door.
"Up so soon? Oh, that's fine! And you've done your hair yourself!"
"I couldn't sleep. I had to get up," sighed Aunt Polly, wearily. "I had to do my hair, too. YOU weren't here."
"But I didn't suppose you were ready for me, auntie," explained Pollyanna, hurriedly. "Never mind, though. You'll be glad I wasn't when you find what I've been doing."
"Well, I sha'n't—not this morning," frowned Aunt Polly, perversely. "Nobody could be glad this morning. Look at it rain! That makes the third rainy day this week."
"That's so—but you know the sun never seems quite so perfectly lovely as it does after a lot of rain like this," smiled Pollyanna, deftly arranging a bit of lace and ribbon at her aunt's throat. "Now come. Breakfast's all ready. Just you wait till you see what I've got for you."
Aunt Polly, however, was not to be diverted, even by corn muffins, this morning. Nothing was right, nothing was even endurable, as she felt; and Pollyanna's patience was sorely taxed before the meal was over. To make matters worse, the roof over the east attic window was found to be leaking, and an unpleasant letter came in the mail. Pollyanna, true to her creed, laughingly declared that, for her part, she was glad they had a roof—to leak; and that, as for the letter, she'd been expecting it for a week, anyway, and she was actually glad she wouldn't have to worry any more for fear it would come. It COULDN'T come now, because it HAD come; and 'twas over with.
All this, together with sundry other hindrances and annoyances, delayed the usual morning work until far into the afternoon—something that was always particularly displeasing to methodical Aunt Polly, who ordered her own life, preferably, by the tick of the clock.
"But it's half-past three, Pollyanna, already! Did you know it?" she fretted at last. "And you haven't made the beds yet."
"No, dearie, but I will. Don't worry."
"But, did you hear what I said? Look at the clock, child. It's after three o'clock!"
"So 'tis, but never mind, Aunt Polly. We can be glad 'tisn't after four."
Aunt Polly sniffed her disdain.
"I suppose YOU can," she observed tartly.
Pollyanna laughed.
"Well, you see, auntie, clocks ARE accommodating things, when you stop to think about it. I found that out long ago at the Sanatorium. When I was doing something that I liked, and I didn't WANT the time to go fast, I'd just look at the hour hand, and I'd feel as if I had lots of time—it went so slow. Then, other days, when I had to keep something that hurt on for an hour, maybe, I'd watch the little second hand; and you see then I felt as if Old Time was just humping himself to help me out by going as fast as ever he could. Now I'm watching the hour hand to-day, 'cause I don't want Time to go fast. See?" she twinkled mischievously, as she hurried from the room, before Aunt Polly had time to answer.
It was certainly a hard day, and by night Pollyanna looked pale and worn out. This, too, was a source of worriment to Aunt Polly.
"Dear me, child, you look tired to death!" she fumed. "WHAT we're going to do I don't know. I suppose YOU'LL be sick next!"
"Nonsense, auntie! I'm not sick a bit," declared Pollyanna, dropping herself with a sigh on to the couch. "But I AM tired. My! how good this couch feels! I'm glad I'm tired, after all—it's so nice to rest."
Aunt Polly turned with an impatient gesture.
"Glad—glad—glad! Of course you're glad, Pollyanna. You're always glad for everything. I never saw such a girl. Oh, yes, I know it's the game," she went on, in answer to the look that came to Pollyanna's face. "And it's a very good game, too; but I think you carry it altogether too far. This eternal doctrine of 'it might be worse' has got on my nerves, Pollyanna. Honestly, it would be a real relief if you WOULDN'T be glad for something, sometime!"
"Why, auntie!" Pollyanna pulled herself half erect.
"Well, it would. You just try it sometime, and see."
"But, auntie, I—" Pollyanna stopped and eyed her aunt reflectively. An odd look came to her eyes; a slow smile curved her lips. Mrs. Chilton, who had turned back to her work, paid no heed; and, after a minute, Pollyanna lay back on the couch without finishing her sentence, the curious smile still on her lips.
It was raining again when Pollyanna got up the next morning, and a northeast wind was still whistling down the chimney. Pollyanna at the window drew an involuntary sigh; but almost at once her face changed.
"Oh, well, I'm glad—" She clapped her hands to her lips. "Dear me," she chuckled softly, her eyes dancing, "I shall forget—I know I shall; and that'll spoil it all! I must just remember not to be glad for anything—not ANYTHING to-day."
Pollyanna did not make corn muffins that morning. She started the breakfast, then went to her aunt's room.
Mrs. Chilton was still in bed.
"I see it rains, as usual," she observed, by way of greeting.
"Yes, it's horrid—perfectly horrid," scolded Pollyanna. "It's rained 'most every day this week, too. I hate such weather."
Aunt Polly turned with a faint surprise in her eyes; but Pollyanna was looking the other way.
"Are you going to get up now?" she asked a little wearily.
"Why, y-yes," murmured Aunt Polly, still with that faint surprise in her eyes. "What's the matter, Pollyanna? Are you especially tired?"
"Yes, I am tired this morning. I didn't sleep well, either. I hate not to sleep. Things always plague so in the night, when you wake up."
"I guess I know that," fretted Aunt Polly. "I didn't sleep a wink after two o'clock myself. And there's that roof! How are we going to have it fixed, pray, if it never stops raining? Have you been up to empty the pans?"
"Oh, yes—and took up some more. There's a new leak now, further over."
"A new one! Why, it'll all be leaking yet!"
Pollyanna opened her lips. She had almost said, "Well, we can be glad to have it fixed all at once, then," when she suddenly remembered, and substituted, in a tired voice:
"Very likely it will, auntie. It looks like it now, fast enough. Anyway, it's made fuss enough for a whole roof already, and I'm sick of it!" With which statement, Pollyanna, her face carefully averted, turned and trailed listlessly out of the room.
"It's so funny and so—so hard, I'm afraid I'm making a mess of it," she whispered to herself anxiously, as she hurried down-stairs to the kitchen.
Behind her, Aunt Polly, in the bedroom, gazed after her with eyes that were again faintly puzzled.
Aunt Polly had occasion a good many times before six o'clock that night to gaze at Pollyanna with surprised and questioning eyes. Nothing was right with Pollyanna. The fire would not burn, the wind blew one particular blind loose three times, and still a third leak was discovered in the roof. The mail brought to Pollyanna a letter that made her cry (though no amount of questioning on Aunt Polly's part would persuade her to tell why). Even the dinner went wrong, and innumerable things happened in the afternoon to call out fretful, discouraged remarks.
Not until the day was more than half gone did a look of shrewd suspicion suddenly fight for supremacy with the puzzled questioning in Aunt Polly's eyes. If Pollyanna saw this she made no sign. Certainly there was no abatement in her fretfulness and discontent. Long before six o'clock, however, the suspicion in Aunt Polly's eyes became conviction, and drove to ignominious defeat the puzzled questioning. But, curiously enough then, a new look came to take its place, a look that was actually a twinkle of amusement.
At last, after a particularly doleful complaint on Pollyanna's part,Aunt Polly threw up her hands with a gesture of half-laughing despair.
"That'll do, that'll do, child! I'll give up. I'll confess myself beaten at my own game. You can be—GLAD for that, if you like," she finished with a grim smile.
"I know, auntie, but you said—" began Pollyanna demurely.
"Yes, yes, but I never will again," interrupted Aunt Polly, with emphasis. "Mercy, what a day this has been! I never want to live through another like it." She hesitated, flushed a little, then went on with evident difficulty: "Furthermore, I—I want you to know that—that I understand I haven't played the game myself—very well, lately; but, after this, I'm going to—to try—WHERE'S my handkerchief?" she finished sharply, fumbling in the folds of her dress.
Pollyanna sprang to her feet and crossed instantly to her aunt's side.
"Oh, but Aunt Polly, I didn't mean—It was just a—a joke," she quavered in quick distress. "I never thought of your taking it THAT way."
"Of course you didn't," snapped Aunt Polly, with all the asperity of a stern, repressed woman who abhors scenes and sentiment, and who is mortally afraid she will show that her heart has been touched. "Don't you suppose I know you didn't mean it that way? Do you think, if I thought you HAD been trying to teach me a lesson that I'd—I'd—" But Pollyanna's strong young arms had her in a close embrace, and she could not finish the sentence.
Pollyanna was not the only one that was finding that winter a hard one. In Boston Jimmy Pendleton, in spite of his strenuous efforts to occupy his time and thoughts, was discovering that nothing quite erased from his vision a certain pair of laughing blue eyes, and nothing quite obliterated from his memory a certain well-loved, merry voice.
Jimmy told himself that if it were not for Mrs. Carew, and the fact that he could be of some use to her, life would not be worth the living. Even at Mrs. Carew's it was not all joy, for always there was Jamie; and Jamie brought thoughts of Pollyanna—unhappy thoughts.
Being thoroughly convinced that Jamie and Pollyanna cared for each other, and also being equally convinced that he himself was in honor bound to step one side and give the handicapped Jamie full right of way, it never occurred to him to question further. Of Pollyanna he did not like to talk or to hear. He knew that both Jamie and Mrs. Carew heard from her; and when they spoke of her, he forced himself to listen, in spite of his heartache. But he always changed the subject as soon as possible, and he limited his own letters to her to the briefest and most infrequent epistles possible. For, to Jimmy, a Pollyanna that was not his was nothing but a source of pain and wretchedness; and he had been so glad when the time came for him to leave Beldingsville and take up his studies again in Boston: to be so near Pollyanna, and yet so far from her, he had found to be nothing but torture.
In Boston, with all the feverishness of a restless mind that seeks distraction from itself, he had thrown himself into the carrying out of Mrs. Carew's plans for her beloved working girls, and such time as could be spared from his own duties he had devoted to this work, much to Mrs. Carew's delight and gratitude.
And so for Jimmy the winter had passed and spring had come—a joyous, blossoming spring full of soft breezes, gentle showers, and tender green buds expanding into riotous bloom and fragrance. To Jimmy, however, it was anything but a joyous spring, for in his heart was still nothing but a gloomy winter of discontent.
"If only they'd settle things and announce the engagement, once for all," murmured Jimmy to himself, more and more frequently these days. "If only I could know SOMETHING for sure, I think I could stand it better!"
Then one day late in April, he had his wish—a part of it: he learned "something for sure."
It was ten o'clock on a Saturday morning, and Mary, at Mrs. Carew's, had ushered him into the music-room with a well-trained: "I'll tell Mrs. Carew you're here, sir. She's expecting you, I think."
In the music-room Jimmy had found himself brought to a dismayed halt by the sight of Jamie at the piano, his arms outflung upon the rack, and his head bowed upon them. Pendleton had half turned to beat a soft retreat when the man at the piano lifted his head, bringing into view two flushed cheeks and a pair of fever-bright eyes.
"Why, Carew," stammered Pendleton, aghast, "has anything—er—happened?"
"Happened! Happened!" ejaculated the lame youth, flinging out both his hands, in each of which, as Pendleton now saw, was an open letter. "Everything has happened! Wouldn't you think it had if all your life you'd been in prison, and suddenly you saw the gates flung wide open? Wouldn't you think it had if all in a minute you could ask the girl you loved to be your wife? Wouldn't you think it had if—But, listen! You think I'm crazy, but I'm not. Though maybe I am, after all, crazy with joy. I'd like to tell you. May I? I've got to tell somebody!"
Pendleton lifted his head. It was as if, unconsciously, he was bracing himself for a blow. He had grown a little white; but his voice was quite steady when he answered.
"Sure you may, old fellow. I'd be—glad to hear it."
Carew, however, had scarcely waited for assent. He was rushing on, still a bit incoherently.
"It's not much to you, of course. You have two feet and your freedom. You have your ambitions and your bridges. But I—to me it's everything. It's a chance to live a man's life and do a man's work, perhaps—even if it isn't dams and bridges. It's something!—and it's something I've proved now I CAN DO! Listen. In that letter there is the announcement that a little story of mine has won the first prize—$3,000, in a contest. In that other letter there, a big publishing house accepts with flattering enthusiasm my first book manuscript for publication. And they both came to-day—this morning. Do you wonder I am crazy glad?"
"No! No, indeed! I congratulate you, Carew, with all my heart," criedJimmy, warmly.
"Thank you—and you may congratulate me. Think what it means to me. Think what it means if, by and by, I can be independent, like a man. Think what it means if I can, some day, make Mrs. Carew proud and glad that she gave the crippled lad a place in her home and heart. Think what it means for me to be able to tell the girl I love that I DO love her."
"Yes—yes, indeed, old boy!" Jimmy spoke firmly, though he had grown very white now.
"Of course, maybe I ought not to do that last, even now," resumed Jamie, a swift cloud shadowing the shining brightness of his countenance. "I'm still tied to—these." He tapped the crutches by his side. "I can't forget, of course, that day in the woods last summer, when I saw Pollyanna—I realize that always I'll have to run the chance of seeing the girl I love in danger, and not being able to rescue her."
"Oh, but Carew—" began the other huskily.
Carew lifted a peremptory hand.
"I know what you'd say. But don't say it. You can't understand. YOU aren't tied to two sticks. You did the rescuing, not I. It came to me then how it would be, always, with me and—Sadie. I'd have to stand aside and see others—"
"SADIE!" cut in Jimmy, sharply.
"Yes; Sadie Dean. You act surprised. Didn't you know? Haven't you suspected—how I felt toward Sadie?" cried Jamie. "Have I kept it so well to myself, then? I tried to, but—" He finished with a faint smile and a half-despairing gesture.
"Well, you certainly kept it all right, old fellow—from me, anyhow," cried Jimmy, gayly. The color had come back to Jimmy's face in a rich flood, and his eyes had grown suddenly very bright indeed. "So it's Sadie Dean. Good! I congratulate you again, I do, I do, as Nancy says." Jimmy was quite babbling with joy and excitement now, so great and wonderful had been the reaction within him at the discovery that it was Sadie, not Pollyanna, whom Jamie loved. Jamie flushed and shook his head a bit sadly.
"No congratulations—yet. You see, I haven't spoken to—her. But I think she must know. I supposed everybody knew. Pray, whom did you think it was, if not—Sadie?"
Jimmy hesitated. Then, a little precipitately, he let it out.
"Why, I'd thought of—Pollyanna."
Jamie smiled and pursed his lips.
"Pollyanna's a charming girl, and I love her—but not that way, any more than she does me. Besides, I fancy somebody else would have something to say about that; eh?"
Jimmy colored like a happy, conscious boy.
"Do you?" he challenged, trying to make his voice properly impersonal.
"Of course! John Pendleton."
"JOHN PENDLETON!" Jimmy wheeled sharply.
"What about John Pendleton?" queried a new voice; and Mrs. Carew came forward with a smile.
Jimmy, around whose ears for the second time within five minutes the world had crashed into fragments, barely collected himself enough for a low word of greeting. But Jamie, unabashed, turned with a triumphant air of assurance.
"Nothing; only I just said that I believed John Pendleton would have something to say about Pollyanna's loving anybody—but him."
"POLLYANNA! JOHN PENDLETON!" Mrs. Carew sat down suddenly in the chair nearest her. If the two men before her had not been so deeply absorbed in their own affairs they might have noticed that the smile had vanished from Mrs. Carew's lips, and that an odd look as of almost fear had come to her eyes.
"Certainly," maintained Jamie. "Were you both blind last summer?Wasn't he with her a lot?"
"Why, I thought he was with—all of us," murmured Mrs. Carew, a little faintly.
"Not as he was with Pollyanna," insisted Jamie. "Besides, have you forgotten that day when we were talking about John Pendleton's marrying, and Pollyanna blushed and stammered and said finally that he HAD thought of marrying—once. Well, I wondered then if there wasn't SOMETHING between them. Don't you remember?"
"Y-yes, I think I do—now that you speak of it," murmured Mrs. Carew again. "But I had—forgotten it."
"Oh, but I can explain that," cut in Jimmy, wetting his dry lips."John Pendleton DID have a love affair once, but it was withPollyanna's mother."
"Pollyanna's mother!" exclaimed two voices in surprise.
"Yes. He loved her years ago, but she did not care for him at all, I understand. She had another lover—a minister, and she married him instead—Pollyanna's father."