As for the girl—she said little. She was not now sitting in her old listless attitude, however, and to her whole self had come a marked change. The flushed cheeks, frowning brow, troubled eyes, and nervously working fingers were plainly the signs of some inward struggle. From time to time she glanced apprehensively down the path beyond Pollyanna, and it was after such a glance that she clutched the little girl's arm.

"See here, kiddie, for just a minute don't you leave me. Do you hear? Stay right where you are? There's a man I know comin'; but no matter what he says, don't you pay no attention, and DON'T YOU GO. I'm goin' to stay with YOU. See?"

Before Pollyanna could more than gasp her wonderment and surprise, she found herself looking up into the face of a very handsome young gentleman, who had stopped before them.

"Oh, here you are," he smiled pleasantly, lifting his hat to Pollyanna's companion. "I'm afraid I'll have to begin with an apology—I'm a little late."

"It don't matter, sir," said the young girl, speaking hurriedly. "I—I've decided not to go."

The young man gave a light laugh.

"Oh, come, my clear, don't be hard on a chap because he's a little late!"

"It isn't that, really," defended the girl, a swift red flaming into her cheeks. "I mean—I'm not going."

"Nonsense!" The man stopped smiling. He spoke sharply. "You said yesterday you'd go."

"I know; but I've changed my mind. I told my little friend here—I'd stay with her."

"Oh, but if you'd rather go with this nice young gentleman," began Pollyanna, anxiously; but she fell back silenced at the look the girl gave her.

"I tell you I had NOT rather go. I'm not going."

"And, pray, why this sudden right-about face?" demanded the young man with an expression that made him suddenly look, to Pollyanna, not quite so handsome. "Yesterday you said—"

"I know I did," interrupted the girl, feverishly. "But I knew then that I hadn't ought to. Let's call it—that I know it even better now. That's all." And she turned away resolutely.

It was not all. The man spoke again, twice. He coaxed, then he sneered with a hateful look in his eyes. At last he said something very low and angry, which Pollyanna did not understand. The next moment he wheeled about and strode away.

The girl watched him tensely till he passed quite out of sight, then, relaxing, she laid a shaking hand on Pollyanna's arm.

"Thanks, kiddie. I reckon I owe you—more than you know. Good-by."

"But you aren't going away NOW!" bemoaned Pollyanna.

The girl sighed wearily.

"I got to. He might come back, and next time I might not be able to—" She clipped the words short and rose to her feet. For a moment she hesitated, then she choked bitterly: "You see, he's the kind that—notices too much, and that hadn't ought to notice—ME—at all!" With that she was gone.

"Why, what a funny lady," murmured Pollyanna, looking wistfully after the vanishing figure. "She was nice, but she was sort of different, too," she commented, rising to her feet and moving idly down the path.



CHAPTER VI

JERRY TO THE RESCUE

It was not long before Pollyanna reached the edge of the Garden at a corner where two streets crossed. It was a wonderfully interesting corner, with its hurrying cars, automobiles, carriages and pedestrians. A huge red bottle in a drug-store window caught her eye, and from down the street came the sound of a hurdy-gurdy. Hesitating only a moment Pollyanna darted across the corner and skipped lightly down the street toward the entrancing music.

Pollyanna found much to interest her now. In the store windows were marvelous objects, and around the hurdy-gurdy, when she had reached it, she found a dozen dancing children, most fascinating to watch. So altogether delightful, indeed, did this pastime prove to be that Pollyanna followed the hurdy-gurdy for some distance, just to see those children dance. Presently she found herself at a corner so busy that a very big man in a belted blue coat helped the people across the street. For an absorbed minute she watched him in silence; then, a little timidly, she herself started to cross.

It was a wonderful experience. The big, blue-coated man saw her at once and promptly beckoned to her. He even walked to meet her. Then, through a wide lane with puffing motors and impatient horses on either hand, she walked unscathed to the further curb. It gave her a delightful sensation, so delightful that, after a minute, she walked back. Twice again, after short intervals, she trod the fascinating way so magically opened at the lifting of the big man's hand. But the last time her conductor left her at the curb, he gave a puzzled frown.



"See here, little girl, ain't you the same one what crossed a minute ago?" he demanded. "And again before that?"

"Yes, sir," beamed Pollyanna. "I've been across four times!"

"Well!" the officer began to bluster; but Pollyanna was still talking.

"And it's been nicer every time!"

"Oh-h, it has—has it?" mumbled the big man, lamely. Then, with a little more spirit he sputtered: "What do you think I'm here for—just to tote you back and forth?"

"Oh, no, sir," dimpled Pollyanna. "Of course you aren't just for me! There are all these others. I know what you are. You're a policeman. We've got one of you out where I live at Mrs. Carew's, only he's the kind that just walks on the sidewalk, you know. I used to think you were soldiers, on account of your gold buttons and blue hats; but I know better now. Only I think you ARE a kind of a soldier, 'cause you're so brave—standing here like this, right in the middle of all these teams and automobiles, helping folks across."

"Ho—ho! Brrrr!" spluttered the big man, coloring like a schoolboy and throwing back his head with a hearty laugh. "Ho—ho! Just as if—" He broke off with a quick lifting of his hand. The next moment he was escorting a plainly very much frightened little old lady from curb to curb. If his step were a bit more pompous, and his chest a bit more full, it must have been only an unconscious tribute to the watching eyes of the little girl back at the starting-point. A moment later, with a haughtily permissive wave of his hand toward the chafing drivers and chauffeurs, he strolled back to Pollyanna.

"Oh, that was splendid!" she greeted him, with shining eyes. "I love to see you do it—and it's just like the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, isn't it?—with you holding back the waves for the people to cross. And how glad you must be all the time, that you can do it! I used to think being a doctor was the very gladdest business there was, but I reckon, after all, being a policeman is gladder yet—to help frightened people like this, you know. And—" But with another "Brrrr!" and an embarrassed laugh, the big blue-coated man was back in the middle of the street, and Pollyanna was all alone on the curbstone.

For only a minute longer did Pollyanna watch her fascinating "Red Sea," then, with a regretful backward glance, she turned away.

"I reckon maybe I'd better be going home now," she meditated. "It must be 'most dinner time." And briskly she started to walk back by the way she had come.

Not until she had hesitated at several corners, and unwittingly made two false turns, did Pollyanna grasp the fact that "going back home" was not to be so easy as she had thought it to be. And not until she came to a building which she knew she had never seen before, did she fully realize that she had lost her way.

She was on a narrow street, dirty, and ill-paved. Dingy tenement blocks and a few unattractive stores were on either side. All about were jabbering men and chattering women—though not one word of what they said could Pollyanna understand. Moreover, she could not help seeing that the people looked at her very curiously, as if they knew she did not belong there.

Several times, already, she had asked her way, but in vain. No one seemed to know where Mrs. Carew lived; and, the last two times, those addressed had answered with a gesture and a jumble of words which Pollyanna, after some thought, decided must be "Dutch," the kind the Haggermans—the only foreign family in Beldingsville—used.

On and on, down one street and up another, Pollyanna trudged. She was thoroughly frightened now. She was hungry, too, and very tired. Her feet ached, and her eyes smarted with the tears she was trying so hard to hold back. Worse yet, it was unmistakably beginning to grow dark.

"Well, anyhow," she choked to herself, "I'm going to be glad I'm lost, 'cause it'll be so nice when I get found. I CAN be glad for that!"

It was at a noisy corner where two broader streets crossed that Pollyanna finally came to a dismayed stop. This time the tears quite overflowed, so that, lacking a handkerchief, she had to use the backs of both hands to wipe them away.

"Hullo, kid, why the weeps?" queried a cheery voice. "What's up?"

With a relieved little cry Pollyanna turned to confront a small boy carrying a bundle of newspapers under his arm.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" she exclaimed. "I've so wanted to see some one who didn't talk Dutch!"

The small boy grinned.

"Dutch nothin'!" he scoffed. "You mean Dago, I bet ye."

Pollyanna gave a slight frown.

"Well, anyway, it—it wasn't English," she said doubtfully; "and they couldn't answer my questions. But maybe you can. Do you know where Mrs. Carew lives?"

"Nix! You can search me."

"Wha-at?" queried Pollyanna, still more doubtfully.

The boy grinned again.

"I say not in mine. I guess I ain't acquainted with the lady."

"But isn't there anybody anywhere that is?" implored Pollyanna. "You see, I just went out for a walk and I got lost. I've been ever and ever so far, but I can't find the house at all; and it's supper—I mean dinner time and getting dark. I want to get back. I MUST get back."

"Gee! Well, I should worry!" sympathized the boy.

"Yes, and I'm afraid Mrs. Carew'll worry, too," sighed Pollyanna.

"Gorry! if you ain't the limit," chuckled the youth, unexpectedly. "But, say, listen! Don't ye know the name of the street ye want?"

"No—only that it's some kind of an avenue," desponded Pollyanna.

"A avenOO, is it? Sure, now, some class to that! We're doin' fine. What's the number of the house? Can ye tell me that? Just scratch your head!"

"Scratch—my—head?" Pollyanna frowned questioningly, and raised a tentative hand to her hair.

The boy eyed her with disdain.

"Aw, come off yer perch! Ye ain't so dippy as all that. I say, don't ye know the number of the house ye want?"

"N-no, except there's a seven in it," returned Pollyanna, with a faintly hopeful air.

"Won't ye listen ter that?" gibed the scornful youth. "There's a seven in it—an' she expects me ter know it when I see it!"

"Oh, I should know the house, if I could only see it," declared Pollyanna, eagerly; "and I think I'd know the street, too, on account of the lovely long yard running right up and down through the middle of it."

This time it was the boy who gave a puzzled frown.

"YARD?" he queried, "in the middle of a street?"

"Yes—trees and grass, you know, with a walk in the middle of it, and seats, and—" But the boy interrupted her with a whoop of delight.

"Gee whiz! Commonwealth Avenue, sure as yer livin'! Wouldn't that get yer goat, now?"

"Oh, do you know—do you, really?" besought Pollyanna. "That sounded like it—only I don't know what you meant about the goat part. There aren't any goats there. I don't think they'd allow—"

"Goats nothin'!" scoffed the boy. "You bet yer sweet life I know where 'tis! Don't I tote Sir James up there to the Garden 'most ev'ry day? An' I'll take YOU, too. Jest ye hang out here till I get on ter my job again, an' sell out my stock. Then we'll make tracks for that 'ere Avenue 'fore ye can say Jack Robinson."

"You mean you'll take me—home?" appealed Pollyanna, still plainly not quite understanding.

"Sure! It's a cinch—if you know the house."

"Oh, yes, I know the house," replied the literal Pollyanna, anxiously, "but I don't know whether it's a—a cinch, or not. If it isn't, can't you—"

But the boy only threw her another disdainful glance and darted off into the thick of the crowd. A moment later Pollyanna heard his strident call of "paper, paper! Herald, Globe,—paper, sir?"

With a sigh of relief Pollyanna stepped back into a doorway and waited. She was tired, but she was happy. In spite of sundry puzzling aspects of the case, she yet trusted the boy, and she had perfect confidence that he could take her home.

"He's nice, and I like him," she said to herself, following with her eyes the boy's alert, darting figure. "But he does talk funny. His words SOUND English, but some of them don't seem to make any sense with the rest of what he says. But then, I'm glad he found me, anyway," she finished with a contented little sigh.

It was not long before the boy returned, his hands empty.

"Come on, kid. All aboard," he called cheerily. "Now we'll hit the trail for the Avenue. If I was the real thing, now, I'd tote ye home in style in a buzzwagon; but seein' as how I hain't got the dough, we'll have ter hoof it."

It was, for the most part, a silent walk. Pollyanna, for once in her life, was too tired to talk, even of the Ladies' Aiders; and the boy was intent on picking out the shortest way to his goal. When the Public Garden was reached, Pollyanna did exclaim joyfully:

"Oh, now I'm 'most there! I remember this place. I had a perfectly lovely time here this afternoon. It's only a little bit of a ways home now."

"That's the stuff! Now we're gettin' there," crowed the boy. "What'd I tell ye? We'll just cut through here to the Avenue, an' then it'll be up ter you ter find the house."

"Oh, I can find the house," exulted Pollyanna, with all the confidence of one who has reached familiar ground.

It was quite dark when Pollyanna led the way up the broad Carew steps. The boy's ring at the bell was very quickly answered, and Pollyanna found herself confronted by not only Mary, but by Mrs. Carew, Bridget, and Jennie as well. All four of the women were white-faced and anxious-eyed.

"Child, child, where HAVE you been?" demanded Mrs. Carew, hurrying forward.

"Why, I—I just went to walk," began Pollyanna, "and I got lost, and this boy—"

"Where did you find her?" cut in Mrs. Carew, turning imperiously to Pollyanna's escort, who was, at the moment, gazing in frank admiration at the wonders about him in the brilliantly-lighted hall.

"Where did you find her, boy?" she repeated sharply.

For a brief moment the boy met her gaze unflinchingly; then something very like a twinkle came into his eyes, though his voice, when he spoke, was gravity itself.

"Well, I found her 'round Bowdoin Square, but I reckon she'd been doin' the North End, only she couldn't catch on ter the lingo of the Dagos, so I don't think she give 'em the glad hand, ma'am."

"The North End—that child—alone! Pollyanna!" shuddered Mrs. Carew.

"Oh, I wasn't alone, Mrs. Carew," fended Pollyanna. "There were ever and ever so many people there, weren't there, boy?"

But the boy, with an impish grin, was disappearing through the door.

Pollyanna learned many things during the next half-hour. She learned that nice little girls do not take long walks alone in unfamiliar cities, nor sit on park benches and talk to strangers. She learned, also, that it was only by a "perfectly marvelous miracle" that she had reached home at all that night, and that she had escaped many, many very disagreeable consequences of her foolishness. She learned that Boston was not Beldingsville, and that she must not think it was.

"But, Mrs. Carew," she finally argued despairingly, "I AM here, and I didn't get lost for keeps. Seems as if I ought to be glad for that instead of thinking all the time of the sorry things that might have happened."

"Yes, yes, child, I suppose so, I suppose so," sighed Mrs. Carew; "but you have given me such a fright, and I want you to be sure, SURE, SURE never to do it again. Now come, dear, you must be hungry."

It was just as she was dropping off to sleep that night that Pollyanna murmured drowsily to herself:

"The thing I'm the very sorriest for of anything is that I didn't ask that boy his name nor where he lived. Now I can't ever say thank you to him!"



CHAPTER VII

A NEW ACQUAINTANCE

Pollyanna's movements were most carefully watched over after her adventurous walk; and, except to go to school, she was not allowed out of the house unless Mary or Mrs. Carew herself accompanied her. This, to Pollyanna, however, was no cross, for she loved both Mrs. Carew and Mary, and delighted to be with them. They were, too, for a while, very generous with their time. Even Mrs. Carew, in her terror of what might have happened, and her relief that it had not happened, exerted herself to entertain the child.

Thus it came about that, with Mrs. Carew, Pollyanna attended concerts and matinees, and visited the Public Library and the Art Museum; and with Mary she took the wonderful "seeing Boston" trips, and visited the State House and the Old South Church.

Greatly as Pollyanna enjoyed the automobile, she enjoyed the trolley cars more, as Mrs. Carew, much to her surprise, found out one day.

"Do we go in the trolley car?" Pollyanna asked eagerly.

"No. Perkins will take us," answered Mrs. Carew. Then, at the unmistakable disappointment in Pollyanna's face, she added in surprise: "Why, I thought you liked the auto, child!"

"Oh, I do," acceded Pollyanna, hurriedly; "and I wouldn't say anything, anyway, because of course I know it's cheaper than the trolley car, and—"

"'Cheaper than the trolley car'!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew, amazed into an interruption.

"Why, yes," explained Pollyanna, with widening eyes; "the trolley car costs five cents a person, you know, and the auto doesn't cost anything, 'cause it's yours. And of course I LOVE the auto, anyway," she hurried on, before Mrs. Carew could speak. "It's only that there are so many more people in the trolley car, and it's such fun to watch them! Don't you think so?"

"Well, no, Pollyanna, I can't say that I do," responded Mrs. Carew, dryly, as she turned away.

As it chanced, not two days later, Mrs. Carew heard something more of Pollyanna and trolley cars—this time from Mary.

"I mean, it's queer, ma'am," explained Mary earnestly, in answer to a question her mistress had asked, "it's queer how Miss Pollyanna just gets 'round EVERYBODY—and without half trying. It isn't that she DOES anything. She doesn't. She just—just looks glad, I guess, that's all. But I've seen her get into a trolley car that was full of cross-looking men and women, and whimpering children, and in five minutes you wouldn't know the place. The men and women have stopped scowling, and the children have forgot what they're cryin' for.

"Sometimes it's just somethin' that Miss Pollyanna has said to me, and they've heard it. Sometimes it's just the 'Thank you,' she gives when somebody insists on givin' us their seat—and they're always doin' that—givin' us seats, I mean. And sometimes it's the way she smiles at a baby or a dog. All dogs everywhere wag their tails at her, anyway, and all babies, big and little, smile and reach out to her. If we get held up it's a joke, and if we take the wrong car, it's the funniest thing that ever happened. And that's the way 'tis about everythin'. One just can't stay grumpy, with Miss Pollyanna, even if you're only one of a trolley car full of folks that don't know her."

"Hm-m; very likely," murmured Mrs. Carew, turning away.

October proved to be, that year, a particularly warm, delightful month, and as the golden days came and went, it was soon very evident that to keep up with Pollyanna's eager little feet was a task which would consume altogether too much of somebody's time and patience; and, while Mrs. Carew had the one, she had not the other, neither had she the willingness to allow Mary to spend quite so much of HER time (whatever her patience might be) in dancing attendance to Pollyanna's whims and fancies.

To keep the child indoors all through those glorious October afternoons was, of course, out of the question. Thus it came about that, before long, Pollyanna found herself once more in the "lovely big yard"—the Boston Public Garden—and alone. Apparently she was as free as before, but in reality she was surrounded by a high stone wall of regulations.

She must not talk to strange men or women; she must not play with strange children; and under no circumstances must she step foot outside the Garden except to come home. Furthermore, Mary, who had taken her to the Garden and left her, made very sure that she knew the way home—that she knew just where Commonwealth Avenue came down to Arlington Street across from the Garden. And always she must go home when the clock in the church tower said it was half-past four.

Pollyanna went often to the Garden after this. Occasionally she went with some of the girls from school. More often she went alone. In spite of the somewhat irksome restrictions she enjoyed herself very much. She could WATCH the people even if she could not talk to them; and she could talk to the squirrels and pigeons and sparrows that so eagerly came for the nuts and grain which she soon learned to carry to them every time she went.

Pollyanna often looked for her old friends of that first day—the man who was so glad he had his eyes and legs and arms, and the pretty young lady who would not go with the handsome man; but she never saw them. She did frequently see the boy in the wheel chair, and she wished she could talk to him. The boy fed the birds and squirrels, too, and they were so tame that the doves would perch on his head and shoulders, and the squirrels would burrow in his pockets for nuts. But Pollyanna, watching from a distance, always noticed one strange circumstance: in spite of the boy's very evident delight in serving his banquet, his supply of food always ran short almost at once; and though he invariably looked fully as disappointed as did the squirrel after a nutless burrowing, yet he never remedied the matter by bringing more food the next day—which seemed most short-sighted to Pollyanna.

When the boy was not playing with the birds and squirrels he was reading—always reading. In his chair were usually two or three worn books, and sometimes a magazine or two. He was nearly always to be found in one especial place, and Pollyanna used to wonder how he got there. Then, one unforgettable day, she found out. It was a school holiday, and she had come to the Garden in the forenoon; and it was soon after she reached the place that she saw him being wheeled along one of the paths by a snub-nosed, sandy-haired boy. She gave a keen glance into the sandy-haired boy's face, then ran toward him with a glad little cry.

"Oh, you—you! I know you—even if I don't know your name. You found me! Don't you remember? Oh, I'm so glad to see you! I've so wanted to say thank you!"

"Gee, if it ain't the swell little lost kid of the AveNOO!" grinned the boy. "Well, what do you know about that! Lost again?"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Pollyanna, dancing up and down on her toes in irrepressible joy. "I can't get lost any more—I have to stay right here. And I mustn't talk, you know. But I can to you, for I KNOW you; and I can to him—after you introduce me," she finished, with a beaming glance at the lame boy, and a hopeful pause.

The sandy-haired youth chuckled softly, and tapped the shoulder of the boy in the chair.

"Listen ter that, will ye? Ain't that the real thing, now? Just you wait while I introDOOCE ye!" And he struck a pompous attitude. "Madam, this is me friend, Sir James, Lord of Murphy's Alley, and—" But the boy in the chair interrupted him.

"Jerry, quit your nonsense!" he cried vexedly. Then to Pollyanna he turned a, glowing face. "I've seen you here lots of times before. I've watched you feed the birds and squirrels—you always have such a lot for them! And I think YOU like Sir Lancelot the best, too. Of course, there's the Lady Rowena—but wasn't she rude to Guinevere yesterday—snatching her dinner right away from her like that?"

Pollyanna blinked and frowned, looking from one to the other of the boys in plain doubt. Jerry chuckled again. Then, with a final push he wheeled the chair into its usual position, and turned to go. Over his shoulder he called to Pollyanna:

"Say, kid, jest let me put ye wise ter somethin'. This chap ain't drunk nor crazy. See? Them's jest names he's give his young friends here,"—with a flourish of his arms toward the furred and feathered creatures that were gathering from all directions. "An' they ain't even names of FOLKS. They're just guys out of books. Are ye on? Yet he'd ruther feed them than feed hisself. Ain't he the limit? Ta-ta, Sir James," he added, with a grimace, to the boy in the chair." Buck up, now—nix on the no grub racket for you! See you later." And he was gone.

Pollyanna was still blinking and frowning when the lame boy turned with a smile.

"You mustn't mind Jerry. That's just his way. He'd cut off his right hand for me—Jerry would; but he loves to tease. Where'd you see him? Does he know you? He didn't tell me your name."

"I'm Pollyanna Whittier. I was lost and he found me and took me home," answered Pollyanna, still a little dazedly.

"I see. Just like him," nodded the boy. "Don't he tote me up here every day?"

A quick sympathy came to Pollyanna's eyes.

"Can't you walk—at all—er—Sir J-James?"

The boy laughed gleefully.

"'Sir James,' indeed! That's only more of Jerry's nonsense. I ain't a 'Sir.'"

Pollyanna looked clearly disappointed.

"You aren't? Nor a—a lord, like he said?"

"I sure ain't."

"Oh, I hoped you were—like Little Lord Fauntleroy, you know," rejoined Pollyanna. "And—"

But the boy interrupted her with an eager:

"Do YOU know Little Lord Fauntleroy? And do you know about Sir Lancelot, and the Holy Grail, and King Arthur and his Round Table, and the Lady Rowena, and Ivanhoe, and all those? DO you?"

Pollyanna gave her head a dubious shake.

"Well, I'm afraid maybe I don't know ALL of 'em," she admitted. "Are they all—in books?"

The boy nodded.

"I've got 'em here—some of 'em," he said. "I like to read 'em over and over. There's always SOMETHING new in 'em. Besides, I hain't got no others, anyway. These were father's. Here, you little rascal—quit that!" he broke off in laughing reproof as a bushy-tailed squirrel leaped to his lap and began to nose in his pockets. "Gorry, guess we'd better give them their dinner or they'll be tryin' to eat us," chuckled the boy. "That's Sir Lancelot. He's always first, you know."

From somewhere the boy produced a small pasteboard box which he opened guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair. Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his haunches five feet away. A third squirrel chattered noisily on a neighboring tree-branch.

From the box the boy took a few nuts, a small roll, and a doughnut. At the latter he looked longingly, hesitatingly.

"Did you—bring anything?" he asked then.

"Lots—in here," nodded Pollyanna, tapping the paper bag she carried.

"Oh, then perhaps I WILL eat it to-day," sighed the boy, dropping the doughnut back into the box with an air of relief.

Pollyanna, on whom the significance of this action was quite lost, thrust her fingers into her own bag, and the banquet was on.

It was a wonderful hour. To Pollyanna it was, in a way, the most wonderful hour she had ever spent, for she had found some one who could talk faster and longer than she could. This strange youth seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of marvelous stories of brave knights and fair ladies, of tournaments and battles. Moreover, so vividly did he draw his pictures that Pollyanna saw with her own eyes the deeds of valor, the knights in armor, and the fair ladies with their jeweled gowns and tresses, even though she was really looking at a flock of fluttering doves and sparrows and a group of frisking squirrels on a wide sweep of sunlit grass.



The Ladies' Aiders were forgotten. Even the glad game was not thought of. Pollyanna, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes was trailing down the golden ages led by a romance-fed boy who—though she did not know it—was trying to crowd into this one short hour of congenial companionship countless dreary days of loneliness and longing.

Not until the noon bells sent Pollyanna hurrying homeward did she remember that she did not even yet know the boy's name.

"I only know it isn't 'Sir James,'" she sighed to herself, frowning with vexation. "But never mind. I can ask him to-morrow."



CHAPTER VIII

JAMIE

Pollyanna did not see the boy "to-morrow." It rained, and she could not go to the Garden at all. It rained the next day, too. Even on the third day she did not see him, for, though the sun came out bright and warm, and though she went very early in the afternoon to the Garden and waited long, he did not come at all. But on the fourth day he was there in his old place, and Pollyanna hastened forward with a joyous greeting.

"Oh, I'm so glad, GLAD to see you! But where've you been? You weren't here yesterday at all."

"I couldn't. The pain wouldn't let me come yesterday," explained the lad, who was looking very white.

"The PAIN! Oh, does it—ache?" stammered Pollyanna, all sympathy at once.

"Oh, yes, always," nodded the boy, with a cheerfully matter-of-fact air. "Most generally I can stand it and come here just the same, except when it gets TOO bad, same as 'twas yesterday. Then I can't."

"But how can you stand it—to have it ache—always?" gasped Pollyanna.

"Why, I have to," answered the boy, opening his eyes a little wider. "Things that are so are SO, and they can't be any other way. So what's the use thinking how they might be? Besides, the harder it aches one day, the nicer 'tis to have it let-up the next."

"I know! That's like the ga—" began Pollyanna; but the boy interrupted her.

"Did you bring a lot this time?" he asked anxiously. "Oh, I hope you did! You see I couldn't bring them any to-day. Jerry couldn't spare even a penny for peanuts this morning and there wasn't really enough stuff in the box for me this noon."

Pollyanna looked shocked.

"You mean—that you didn't have enough to eat—yourself?—for YOUR luncheon?"

"Sure!" smiled the boy. "But don't worry. Tisn't the first time—and 'twon't be the last. I'm used to it. Hi, there! here comes Sir Lancelot."

Pollyanna, however, was not thinking of squirrels.

"And wasn't there any more at home?"

"Oh, no, there's NEVER any left at home," laughed the boy. "You see, mumsey works out—stairs and washings—so she gets some of her feed in them places, and Jerry picks his up where he can, except nights and mornings; he gets it with us then—if we've got any."

Pollyanna looked still more shocked.

"But what do you do when you don't have anything to eat?"

"Go hungry, of course."

"But I never HEARD of anybody who didn't have ANYTHING to eat," gasped Pollyanna. "Of course father and I were poor, and we had to eat beans and fish balls when we wanted turkey. But we had SOMETHING. Why don't you tell folks—all these folks everywhere, that live in these houses? "

"What's the use?"

"Why, they'd give you something, of course!"

The boy laughed once more, this time a little queerly.

"Guess again, kid. You've got another one coming. Nobody I know is dishin' out roast beef and frosted cakes for the askin'. Besides, if you didn't go hungry once in a while, you wouldn't know how good 'taters and milk can taste; and you wouldn't have so much to put in your Jolly Book."

"Your WHAT?"

The boy gave an embarrassed laugh and grew suddenly red.

"Forget it! I didn't think, for a minute, but you was mumsey or Jerry."

"But what IS your Jolly Book?" pleaded Pollyanna. "Please tell me. Are there knights and lords and ladies in that?"

The boy shook his head. His eyes lost their laughter and grew dark and fathomless.

"No; I wish't there was," he sighed wistfully. "But when you—you can't even WALK, you can't fight battles and win trophies, and have fair ladies hand you your sword, and bestow upon you the golden guerdon." A sudden fire came to the boy's eyes. His chin lifted itself as if in response to a bugle call. Then, as suddenly, the fire died, and the boy fell back into his old listlessness.

"You just can't do nothin'," he resumed wearily, after a moment's silence. "You just have to sit and think; and times like that your THINK gets to be something awful. Mine did, anyhow. I wanted to go to school and learn things—more things than just mumsey can teach me; and I thought of that. I wanted to run and play ball with the other boys; and I thought of that. I wanted to go out and sell papers with Jerry; and I thought of that. I didn't want to be taken care of all my life; and I thought of that."

"I know, oh, I know," breathed Pollyanna, with shining eyes. "Didn't I lose MY legs for a while?"

"Did you? Then you do know, some. But you've got yours again. I hain't, you know," sighed the boy, the shadow in his eyes deepening.

"But you haven't told me yet about—the Jolly Book," prompted Pollyanna, after a minute.

The boy stirred and laughed shamefacedly.

"Well, you see, it ain't much, after all, except to me. YOU wouldn't see much in it. I started it a year ago. I was feelin' 'specially bad that day. Nothin' was right. For a while I grumped it out, just thinkin'; and then I picked up one of father's books and tried to read. And the first thing I see was this: I learned it afterwards, so I can say it now.

"'Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem; There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground But holds some joy, of silence or of sound.'

[Footnote: Blanchard. Lyric Offerings. Hidden Joys.]

"Well, I was mad. I wished I could put the guy that wrote that in my place, and see what kind of joy he'd find in my 'leaves.' I was so mad I made up my mind I'd prove he didn't know what he was talkin' about, so I begun to hunt for 'em—the joys in my 'leaves,' you know. I took a little old empty notebook that Jerry had given me, and I said to myself that I'd write 'em down. Everythin' that had anythin' about it that I liked I'd put down in the book. Then I'd just show how many 'joys' I had."

"Yes, yes!" cried Pollyanna, absorbedly, as the boy paused for breath.

"Well, I didn't expect to get many, but—do you know?—I got a lot. There was somethin' about 'most everythin' that I liked a LITTLE, so in it had to go. The very first one was the book itself—that I'd got it, you know, to write in. Then somebody give me a flower in a pot, and Jerry found a dandy book in the subway. After that it was really fun to hunt 'em out—I'd find 'em in such queer places, sometimes. Then one day Jerry got hold of the little notebook, and found out what 'twas. Then he give it its name—the Jolly Book. And—and that's all."

"All—ALL!" cried Pollyanna, delight and amazement struggling for the mastery on her glowing little face. "Why, that's the game! You're playing the glad game, and don't know it—only you're playing it ever and ever so much better than I ever could! Why, I—I couldn't play it at all, I'm afraid, if I—I didn't have enough to eat, and couldn't ever walk, or anything," she choked.

"The game? What game? I don't know anything about any game," frowned the boy.

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

"I know you don't—I know you don't, and that's why it's so perfectly lovely, and so—so wonderful! But listen. I'll tell you what the game is."

And she told him.

"Gee!" breathed the boy appreciatively, when she had finished. "Now what do you think of that!"

"And here you are, playing MY game better than anybody I ever saw, and I don't even know your name yet, nor anything!" exclaimed Pollyanna, in almost awestruck tones. "But I want to;—I want to know everything."

"Pooh! there's nothing to know," rejoined the boy, with a shrug. "Besides, see, here's poor Sir Lancelot and all the rest, waiting for their dinner," he finished.

"Dear me, so they are," sighed Pollyanna, glancing impatiently at the fluttering and chattering creatures all about them. Recklessly she turned her bag upside down and scattered her supplies to the four winds. "There, now, that's done, and we can talk again," she rejoiced. "And there's such a lot I want to know. First, please, what IS your name? I only know it isn't 'Sir James.'"

The boy smiled.

"No, it isn't; but that's what Jerry 'most always calls me. Mumsey and the rest call me 'Jamie.'"

"'JAMIE!'" Pollyanna caught her breath and held it suspended. A wild hope had come to her eyes. It was followed almost instantly, however, by fearful doubt.

"Does 'mumsey' mean—mother?"

"Sure!"

Pollyanna relaxed visibly. Her face fell. If this Jamie had a mother, he could not, of course, be Mrs. Carew's Jamie, whose mother had died long ago. Still, even as he was, he was wonderfully interesting.

"But where do you live?" she catechized eagerly. "Is there anybody else in your family but your mother and—and Jerry? Do you always come here every day? Where is your Jolly Book? Mayn't I see it? Don't the doctors say you can ever walk again? And where was it you said you got it?—this wheel chair, I mean."

The boy chuckled.

"Say, how many of them questions do you expect me to answer all at once? I'll begin at the last one, anyhow, and work backwards, maybe, if I don't forget what they be. I got this chair a year ago. Jerry knew one of them fellers what writes for papers, you know, and he put it in about me—how I couldn't ever walk, and all that, and—and the Jolly Book, you see. The first thing I knew, a whole lot of men and women come one day toting this chair, and said 'twas for me. That they'd read all about me, and they wanted me to have it to remember them by."

"My! how glad you must have been!"

"I was. It took a whole page of my Jolly Book to tell about that chair."

"But can't you EVER walk again?" Pollyanna's eyes were blurred with tears.

"It don't look like it. They said I couldn't."

"Oh, but that's what they said about me, and then they sent me to Dr. Ames, and I stayed 'most a year; and HE made me walk. Maybe he could YOU!"

The boy shook his head.

"He couldn't—you see; I couldn't go to him, anyway. 'Twould cost too much. We'll just have to call it that I can't ever—walk again. But never mind." The boy threw back his head impatiently. "I'm trying not to THINK of that. You know what it is when—when your THINK gets to going."

"Yes, yes, of course—and here I am talking about it!" cried Pollyanna, penitently. "I SAID you knew how to play the game better than I did, now. But go on. You haven't told me half, yet. Where do you live? And is Jerry all the brothers and sisters you've got?"

A swift change came to the boy's face. His eyes glowed.

"Yes—and he ain't mine, really. He ain't any relation, nor mumsey ain't, neither. And only think how good they've been to me!"

"What's that?" questioned Pollyanna, instantly on the alert. "Isn't that—that 'mumsey' your mother at all?"

"No; and that's what makes—"

"And haven't you got any mother?" interrupted Pollyanna, in growing excitement.

"No; I never remember any mother, and father died six years ago."

"How old were you?"

"I don't know. I was little. Mumsey says she guesses maybe I was about six. That's when they took me, you see."

"And your name is Jamie?" Pollyanna was holding her breath.

"Why, yes, I told you that."

"And what's the other name?" Longingly, but fearfully, Pollyanna asked this question.

"I don't know."

"YOU DON'T KNOW!"

"I don't remember. I was too little, I suppose. Even the Murphys don't know. They never knew me as anything but Jamie."

A great disappointment came to Pollyanna's face, but almost immediately a flash of thought drove the shadow away.

"Well, anyhow, if you don't know what your name is, you can't know it isn't 'Kent'!" she exclaimed.

"'Kent'?" puzzled the boy.

"Yes," began Pollyanna, all excitement. "You see, there was a little boy named Jamie Kent that—" She stopped abruptly and bit her lip. It had occurred to Pollyanna that it would be kinder not to let this boy know yet of her hope that he might be the lost Jamie. It would be better that she make sure of it before raising any expectations, otherwise she might be bringing him sorrow rather than joy. She had not forgotten how disappointed Jimmy Bean had been when she had been obliged to tell him that the Ladies' Aid did not want him, and again when at first Mr. Pendleton had not wanted him, either. She was determined that she would not make the same mistake a third time; so very promptly now she assumed an air of elaborate indifference on this most dangerous subject, as she said:

"But never mind about Jamie Kent. Tell me about yourself. I'm SO interested!"

"There isn't anything to tell. I don't know anything nice," hesitated the boy. "They said father was—was queer, and never talked. They didn't even know his name. Everybody called him 'The Professor.' Mumsey says he and I lived in a little back room on the top floor of the house in Lowell where they used to live. They were poor then, but they wasn't near so poor as they are now. Jerry's father was alive them days, and had a job."

"Yes, yes, go on," prompted Pollyanna.

"Well, mumsey says my father was sick a lot, and he got queerer and queerer, so that they had me downstairs with them a good deal. I could walk then, a little, but my legs wasn't right. I played with Jerry, and the little girl that died. Well, when father died there wasn't anybody to take me, and some men were goin' to put me in an orphan asylum; but mumsey says I took on so, and Jerry took on so, that they said they'd keep me. And they did. The little girl had just died, and they said I might take her place. And they've had me ever since. And I fell and got worse, and they're awful poor now, too, besides Jerry's father dyin'. But they've kept me. Now ain't that what you call bein' pretty good to a feller?"

"Yes, oh, yes," cried Pollyanna. "But they'll get their reward—I know they'll get their reward!" Pollyanna was quivering with delight now. The last doubt had fled. She had found the lost Jamie. She was sure of it. But not yet must she speak. First Mrs. Carew must see him. Then—THEN—! Even Pollyanna's imagination failed when it came to picturing the bliss in store for Mrs. Carew and Jamie at that glad reunion.

She sprang lightly to her feet in utter disregard of Sir Lancelot who had come back and was nosing in her lap for more nuts.

"I've got to go now, but I'll come again to-morrow. Maybe I'll have a lady with me that you'll like to know. You'll be here to-morrow, won't you?" she finished anxiously.

"Sure, if it's pleasant. Jerry totes me up here 'most every mornin'. They fixed it so he could, you know; and I bring my dinner and stay till four o'clock. Jerry's good to me—he is!"

"I know, I know," nodded Pollyanna. "And maybe you'll find somebody else to be good to you, too," she caroled. With which cryptic statement and a beaming smile, she was gone.



CHAPTER IX

PLANS AND PLOTTINGS

On the way home Pollyanna made joyous plans. To-morrow, in some way or other, Mrs. Carew must be persuaded to go with her for a walk in the Public Garden. Just how this was to be brought about Pollyanna did not know; but brought about it must be.

To tell Mrs. Carew plainly that she had found Jamie, and wanted her to go to see him, was out of the question. There was, of course, a bare chance that this might not be her Jamie; and if it were not, and if she had thus raised in Mrs. Carew false hopes, the result might be disastrous. Pollyanna knew, from what Mary had told her, that twice already Mrs. Carew had been made very ill by the great disappointment of following alluring clues that had led to some boy very different from her dead sister's son. So Pollyanna knew that she could not tell Mrs. Carew why she wanted her to go to walk to-morrow in the Public Garden. But there would be a way, declared Pollyanna to herself as she happily hurried homeward.

Fate, however, as it happened, once more intervened in the shape of a heavy rainstorm; and Pollyanna did not have to more than look out of doors the next morning to realize that there would be no Public Garden stroll that day. Worse yet, neither the next day nor the next saw the clouds dispelled; and Pollyanna spent all three afternoons wandering from window to window, peering up into the sky, and anxiously demanding of every one: "DON'T you think it looks a LITTLE like clearing up?"

So unusual was this behavior on the part of the cheery little girl, and so irritating was the constant questioning, that at last Mrs. Carew lost her patience.

"For pity's sake, child, what is the trouble?" she cried. "I never knew you to fret so about the weather. Where's that wonderful glad game of yours to-day?"

Pollyanna reddened and looked abashed.

"Dear me, I reckon maybe I did forget the game this time," she admitted. "And of course there IS something about it I can be glad for, if I'll only hunt for it. I can be glad that—that it will HAVE to stop raining sometime 'cause God said he WOULDN'T send another flood. But you see, I did so want it to be pleasant to-day."

"Why, especially?"

"Oh, I—I just wanted to go to walk in the Public Garden." Pollyanna was trying hard to speak unconcernedly. "I—I thought maybe you'd like to go with me, too." Outwardly Pollyanna was nonchalance itself. Inwardly, however, she was aquiver with excitement and suspense.

"I go to walk in the Public Garden?" queried Mrs. Carew, with brows slightly uplifted. "Thank you, no, I'm afraid not," she smiled.

"Oh, but you—you wouldn't REFUSE!" faltered Pollyanna, in quick panic.

"I have refused."

Pollyanna swallowed convulsively. She had grown really pale.

"But, Mrs. Carew, please, PLEASE don't say you WON'T go, when it gets pleasant," she begged. "You see, for a—a special reason I wanted you to go—with me—just this once."

Mrs. Carew frowned. She opened her lips to make the "no" more decisive; but something in Pollyanna's pleading eyes must have changed the words, for when they came they were a reluctant acquiescence.

"Well, well, child, have your own way. But if I promise to go, YOU must promise not to go near the window for an hour, and not to ask again to-day if I think it's going to clear up."

"Yes'm, I will—I mean, I won't," palpitated Pollyanna. Then, as a pale shaft of light that was almost a sunbeam, came aslant through the window, she cried joyously: "But you DO think it IS going to—Oh!" she broke off in dismay, and ran from the room.

Unmistakably it "cleared up" the next morning. But, though the sun shone brightly, there was a sharp chill in the air, and by afternoon, when Pollyanna came home from school, there was a brisk wind. In spite of protests, however, she insisted that it was a beautiful day out, and that she should be perfectly miserable if Mrs. Carew would not come for a walk in the Public Garden. And Mrs. Carew went, though still protesting.

As might have been expected, it was a fruitless journey. Together the impatient woman and the anxious-eyed little girl hurried shiveringly up one path and down another. (Pollyanna, not finding the boy in his accustomed place, was making frantic search in every nook and corner of the Garden. To Pollyanna it seemed that she could not have it so. Here she was in the Garden, and here with her was Mrs. Carew; but not anywhere to be found was Jamie—and yet not one word could she say to Mrs. Carew.) At last, thoroughly chilled and exasperated, Mrs. Carew insisted on going home; and despairingly Pollyanna went.

Sorry days came to Pollyanna then. What to her was perilously near a second deluge—but according to Mrs. Carew was merely "the usual fall rains"—brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady downpour. If perchance occasionally there came a day of sunshine, Pollyanna always flew to the Garden; but in vain. Jamie was never there. It was the middle of November now, and even the Garden itself was full of dreariness. The trees were bare, the benches almost empty, and not one boat was on the little pond. True, the squirrels and pigeons were there, and the sparrows were as pert as ever, but to feed them was almost more of a sorrow than a joy, for every saucy switch of Sir Lancelot's feathery tail but brought bitter memories of the lad who had given him his name—and who was not there.

"And to think I didn't find out where he lived!" mourned Pollyanna to herself over and over again, as the days passed. "And he was Jamie—I just know he was Jamie. And now I'll have to wait and wait till spring comes, and it's warm enough for him to come here again. And then, maybe, I sha'n't be coming here by that time. O dear, O dear—and he WAS Jamie, I know he was Jamie!"

Then, one dreary afternoon, the unexpected happened. Pollyanna, passing through the upper hallway heard angry voices in the hall below, one of which she recognized as being Mary's, while the other—the other—

The other voice was saying:

"Not on yer life! It's nix on the beggin' business. Do yer get me? I wants ter see the kid, Pollyanna. I got a message for her from—from Sir James. Now beat it, will ye, and trot out the kid, if ye don't mind."

With a glad little cry Pollyanna turned and fairly flew down the stairway.

"Oh, I'm here, I'm here, I'm right here!" she panted, stumbling forward. "What is it? Did Jamie send you?"

In her excitement she had almost flung herself with outstretched arms upon the boy when Mary intercepted a shocked, restraining hand.

"Miss Pollyanna, Miss Pollyanna, do you mean to say you know this—this beggar boy?"

The boy flushed angrily; but before he could speak Pollyanna interposed valiant championship.

"He isn't a beggar boy. He belongs to one of my very best friends. Besides, he's the one that found me and brought me home that time I was lost." Then to the boy she turned with impetuous questioning. "What is it? Did Jamie send you?"

"Sure he did. He hit the hay a month ago, and he hain't been up since."

"He hit—what?" puzzled Pollyanna.

"Hit the hay—went ter bed. He's sick, I mean, and he wants ter see ye. Will ye come?"

"Sick? Oh, I'm so sorry!" grieved Pollyanna. "Of course I'll come. I'll go get my hat and coat right away."

"Miss Pollyanna!" gasped Mary in stern disapproval. "As if Mrs. Carew would let you go—ANYWHERE with a strange boy like this!"

"But he isn't a strange boy," objected Pollyanna. "I've known him ever so long, and I MUST go. I—"

"What in the world is the meaning of this?" demanded Mrs. Carew icily from the drawing-room doorway. "Pollyanna, who is this boy, and what is he doing here?"

Pollyanna turned with a quick cry.

"Oh, Mrs. Carew, you'll let me go, won't you?"

"Go where?"

"To see my brother, ma'am," cut in the boy hurriedly, and with an obvious effort to be very polite. "He's sort of off his feed, ye know, and he wouldn't give me no peace till I come up—after her," with an awkward gesture toward Pollyanna. "He thinks a sight an' all of her."

"I may go, mayn't I?" pleaded Pollyanna.

Mrs. Carew frowned.

"Go with this boy—YOU? Certainly not, Pollyanna! I wonder you are wild enough to think of it for a moment."

"Oh, but I want you to come, too," began Pollyanna.

"I? Absurd, child! That is impossible. You may give this boy here a little money, if you like, but—"

"Thank ye, ma'am, but I didn't come for money," resented the boy, his eyes flashing. "I come for—her."

"Yes, and Mrs. Carew, it's Jerry—Jerry Murphy, the boy that found me when I was lost, and brought me home," appealed Pollyanna. "NOW won't you let me go?"

Mrs. Carew shook her head.

"It is out of the question, Pollyanna."

"But he says Ja— —the other boy is sick, and wants me!"

"I can't help that."

"And I know him real well, Mrs. Carew. I do, truly. He reads books—lovely books, all full of knights and lords and ladies, and he feeds the birds and squirrels and gives 'em names, and everything. And he can't walk, and he doesn't have enough to eat, lots of days," panted Pollyanna; "and he's been playing my glad game for a year, and didn't know it. And he plays it ever and ever so much better than I do. And I've hunted and hunted for him, ever and ever so many days. Honest and truly, Mrs. Carew, I've just GOT to see him," almost sobbed Pollyanna. "I can't lose him again!"

An angry color flamed into Mrs. Carew's cheeks.

"Pollyanna, this is sheer nonsense. I am surprised. I am amazed at you for insisting upon doing something you know I disapprove of. I CAN NOT allow you to go with this boy. Now please let me hear no more about it."

A new expression came to Pollyanna's face. With a look half-terrified, half-exalted, she lifted her chin and squarely faced Mrs. Carew. Tremulously, but determinedly, she spoke.

"Then I'll have to tell you. I didn't mean to—till I was sure. I wanted you to see him first. But now I've got to tell. I can't lose him again. I think, Mrs. Carew, he's—Jamie."

"Jamie! Not—my—Jamie!" Mrs. Carew's face had grown very white.

"Yes."

"Impossible!"

"I know; but, please, his name IS Jamie, and he doesn't know the other one. His father died when he was six years old, and he can't remember his mother. He's twelve years old, he thinks. These folks took him in when his father died, and his father was queer, and didn't tell folks his name, and—"

But Mrs. Carew had stopped her with a gesture. Mrs. Carew was even whiter than before, but her eyes burned with a sudden fire.

"We'll go at once," she said. "Mary, tell Perkins to have the car here as soon as possible. Pollyanna, get your hat and coat. Boy, wait here, please. We'll be ready to go with you immediately." The next minute she had hurried up-stairs.

In the hall the boy drew a long breath.

"Gee whiz!" he muttered softly. "If we ain't goin' ter go in a buzz-wagon! Some class ter that! Gorry! what'll Sir James say?"



CHAPTER X

IN MURPHY'S ALLEY

With the opulent purr that seems to be peculiar to luxurious limousines, Mrs. Carew's car rolled down Commonwealth Avenue and out upon Arlington Street to Charles. Inside sat a shining-eyed little girl and a white-faced, tense woman. Outside, to give directions to the plainly disapproving chauffeur, sat Jerry Murphy, inordinately proud and insufferably important.

When the limousine came to a stop before a shabby doorway in a narrow, dirty alley, the boy leaped to the ground, and, with a ridiculous imitation of the liveried pomposities he had so often watched, threw open the door of the car and stood waiting for the ladies to alight.

Pollyanna sprang out at once, her eyes widening with amazement and distress as she looked about her. Behind her came Mrs. Carew, visibly shuddering as her gaze swept the filth, the sordidness, and the ragged children that swarmed shrieking and chattering out of the dismal tenements, and surrounded the car in a second.

Jerry waved his arms angrily.

"Here, you, beat it!" he yelled to the motley throng. "This ain't no free movies! CAN that racket and get a move on ye. Lively, now! We gotta get by. Jamie's got comp'ny."

Mrs. Carew shuddered again, and laid a trembling hand on Jerry's shoulder.

"Not—HERE!" she recoiled.

But the boy did not hear. With shoves and pushes from sturdy fists and elbows, he was making a path for his charges; and before Mrs. Carew knew quite how it was done, she found herself with the boy and Pollyanna at the foot of a rickety flight of stairs in a dim, evil-smelling hallway.

Once more she put out a shaking hand.

"Wait," she commanded huskily. "Remember! Don't either of you say a word about—about his being possibly the boy I'm looking for. I must see for myself first, and—question him."

"Of course!" agreed Pollyanna.

"Sure! I'm on," nodded the boy. "I gotta go right off anyhow, so I won't bother ye none. Now toddle easy up these 'ere stairs. There's always holes, and most generally there's a kid or two asleep somewheres. An' the elevator ain't runnin' ter-day," he gibed cheerfully. "We gotta go ter the top, too!"

Mrs. Carew found the "holes"—broken boards that creaked and bent fearsomely under her shrinking feet; and she found one "kid"—a two-year-old baby playing with an empty tin can on a string which he was banging up and down the second flight of stairs. On all sides doors were opened, now boldly, now stealthily, but always disclosing women with tousled heads or peering children with dirty faces. Somewhere a baby was wailing piteously. Somewhere else a man was cursing. Everywhere was the smell of bad whiskey, stale cabbage, and unwashed humanity.

At the top of the third and last stairway the boy came to a pause before a closed door.

"I'm just a-thinkin' what Sir James'll say when he's wise ter the prize package I'm bringin' him," he whispered in a throaty voice. "I know what mumsey'll do—she'll turn on the weeps in no time ter see Jamie so tickled." The next moment he threw wide the door with a gay: "Here we be—an' we come in a buzz-wagon! Ain't that goin' some, Sir James?"

It was a tiny room, cold and cheerless and pitifully bare, but scrupulously neat. There were here no tousled heads, no peering children, no odors of whiskey, cabbage, and unclean humanity. There were two beds, three broken chairs, a dry-goods-box table, and a stove with a faint glow of light that told of a fire not nearly brisk enough to heat even that tiny room. On one of the beds lay a lad with flushed cheeks and fever-bright eyes. Near him sat a thin, white-faced woman, bent and twisted with rheumatism.

Mrs. Carew stepped into the room and, as if to steady herself, paused a minute with her back to the wall. Pollyanna hurried forward with a low cry just as Jerry, with an apologetic "I gotta go now; good-by!" dashed through the door.

"Oh, Jamie, I'm so glad I've found you," cried Pollyanna. "You don't know how I've looked and looked for you every day. But I'm so sorry you're sick!"

Jamie smiled radiantly and held out a thin white hand.

"I ain't sorry—I'm GLAD," he emphasized meaningly; "'cause it's brought you to see me. Besides, I'm better now, anyway. Mumsey, this is the little girl, you know, that told me the glad game—and mumsey's playing it, too," he triumphed, turning back to Pollyanna. "First she cried 'cause her back hurts too bad to let her work; then when I was took worse she was GLAD she couldn't work, 'cause she could be here to take care of me, you know."

At that moment Mrs. Carew hurried forward, her eyes half-fearfully, half-longingly on the face of the lame boy in the bed.

"It's Mrs. Carew. I've brought her to see you, Jamie," introduced Pollyanna, in a tremulous voice.

The little twisted woman by the bed had struggled to her feet by this time, and was nervously offering her chair. Mrs. Carew accepted it without so much as a glance. Her eyes were still on the boy in the bed.

"Your name is—Jamie?" she asked, with visible difficulty.

"Yes, ma'am." The boy's bright eyes looked straight into hers.

"What is your other name?"

"I don't know."

"He is not your son?" For the first time Mrs. Carew turned to the twisted little woman who was still standing by the bed.

"No, madam."

"And you don't know his name?"

"No, madam. I never knew it."

With a despairing gesture Mrs. Carew turned back to the boy.

"But think, think—don't you remember ANYTHING of your name but—Jamie?"

The boy shook his head. Into his eyes was coming a puzzled wonder.

"No, nothing."

"Haven't you anything that belonged to your father, with possibly his name in it?"

"There wasn't anythin' worth savin' but them books," interposed Mrs. Murphy. "Them's his. Maybe you'd like to look at 'em," she suggested, pointing to a row of worn volumes on a shelf across the room. Then, in plainly uncontrollable curiosity, she asked: "Was you thinkin' you knew him, ma'am?"

"I don't know," murmured Mrs. Carew, in a half-stifled voice, as she rose to her feet and crossed the room to the shelf of books.

There were not many—perhaps ten or a dozen. There was a volume of Shakespeare's plays, an "Ivanhoe," a much-thumbed "Lady of the Lake," a book of miscellaneous poems, a coverless "Tennyson," a dilapidated "Little Lord Fauntleroy," and two or three books of ancient and medieval history. But, though Mrs. Carew looked carefully through every one, she found nowhere any written word. With a despairing sigh she turned back to the boy and to the woman, both of whom now were watching her with startled, questioning eyes.

"I wish you'd tell me—both of you—all you know about yourselves," she said brokenly, dropping herself once more into the chair by the bed.

And they told her. It was much the same story that Jamie had told Pollyanna in the Public Garden. There was little that was new, nothing that was significant, in spite of the probing questions that Mrs. Carew asked. At its conclusion Jamie turned eager eyes on Mrs. Carew's face.

"Do you think you knew—my father?" he begged.

Mrs. Carew closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her head.

"I don't—know," she answered. "But I think—not."

Pollyanna gave a quick cry of keen disappointment, but as quickly she suppressed it in obedience to Mrs. Carew's warning glance. With new horror, however, she surveyed the tiny room.

Jamie, turning his wondering eyes from Mrs. Carew's face, suddenly awoke to his duties as host.

"Wasn't you good to come!" he said to Pollyanna, gratefully. "How's Sir Lancelot? Do you ever go to feed him now?" Then, as Pollyanna did not answer at once, he hurried on, his eyes going from her face to the somewhat battered pink in a broken-necked bottle in the window. "Did you see my posy? Jerry found it. Somebody dropped it and he picked it up. Ain't it pretty? And it SMELLS a little."

But Pollyanna did not seem even to have heard him. She was still gazing, wide-eyed about the room, clasping and unclasping her hands nervously.

"But I don't see how you can ever play the game here at all, Jamie," she faltered. "I didn't suppose there could be anywhere such a perfectly awful place to live," she shuddered.

"Ho!" scoffed Jamie, valiantly. "You'd oughter see the Pikes' down-stairs. Theirs is a whole lot worse'n this. You don't know what a lot of nice things there is about this room. Why, we get the sun in that winder there for 'most two hours every day, when it shines. And if you get real near it you can see a whole lot of sky from it. If we could only KEEP the room!—but you see we've got to leave, we're afraid. And that's what's worrin' us."

"Leave!"

"Yes. We got behind on the rent—mumsey bein' sick so, and not earnin' anythin'." In spite of a courageously cheerful smile, Jamie's voice shook. "Mis' Dolan down-stairs—the woman what keeps my wheel chair for me, you know—is helpin' us out this week. But of course she can't do it always, and then we'll have to go—if Jerry don't strike it rich, or somethin'."

"Oh, but can't we—" began Pollyanna.

She stopped short. Mrs. Carew had risen to her feet abruptly with a hurried:

"Come, Pollyanna, we must go." Then to the woman she turned wearily. "You won't have to leave. I'll send you money and food at once, and I'll mention your case to one of the charity organizations in which I am interested, and they will—"

In surprise she ceased speaking. The bent little figure of the woman opposite had drawn itself almost erect. Mrs. Murphy's cheeks were flushed. Her eyes showed a smouldering fire.

"Thank you, no, Mrs. Carew," she said tremulously, but proudly. "We're poor—God knows; but we ain't charity folks."

"Nonsense!" cried Mrs. Carew, sharply. "You're letting the woman down-stairs help you. This boy said so."

"I know; but that ain't charity," persisted the woman, still tremulously. "Mrs. Dolan is my FRIEND. She knows I'D do HER a good turn just as quick—I have done 'em for her in times past. Help from FRIENDS ain't charity. They CARE; and that—that makes a difference. We wa'n't always as we are now, you see; and that makes it hurt all the more—all this. Thank you; but we couldn't take—your money."

Mrs. Carew frowned angrily. It had been a most disappointing, heart-breaking, exhausting hour for her. Never a patient woman, she was exasperated now, besides being utterly tired out.

"Very well, just as you please," she said coldly. Then, with vague irritation she added: "But why don't you go to your landlord and insist that he make you even decently comfortable while you do stay? Surely you're entitled to something besides broken windows stuffed with rags and papers! And those stairs that I came up are positively dangerous."

Mrs. Murphy sighed in a discouraged way. Her twisted little figure had fallen back into its old hopelessness.

"We have tried to have something done, but it's never amounted to anything. We never see anybody but the agent, of course; and he says the rents are too low for the owner to put out any more money on repairs."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mrs. Carew, with all the sharpness of a nervous, distraught woman who has at last found an outlet for her exasperation. "It's shameful! What's more, I think it's a clear case of violation of the law;—those stairs are, certainly. I shall make it my business to see that he's brought to terms. What is the name of that agent, and who is the owner of this delectable establishment?"

"I don't know the name of the owner, madam; but the agent is Mr. Dodge."

"Dodge!" Mrs. Carew turned sharply, an odd look on her face. "You don't mean—Henry Dodge?"

"Yes, madam. His name is Henry, I think."

A flood of color swept into Mrs. Carew's face, then receded, leaving it whiter than before.

"Very well, I—I'll attend to it," she murmured, in a half-stifled voice, turning away. "Come, Pollyanna, we must go now."

Over at the bed Pollyanna was bidding Jamie a tearful good-by.

"But I'll come again. I'll come real soon," she promised brightly, as she hurried through the door after Mrs. Carew.

Not until they had picked their precarious way down the three long nights of stairs and through the jabbering, gesticulating crowd of men, women, and children that surrounded the scowling Perkins and the limousine, did Pollyanna speak again. But then she scarcely waited for the irate chauffeur to slam the door upon them before she pleaded:

"Dear Mrs. Carew, please, please say that it was Jamie! Oh, it would be so nice for him to be Jamie."

"But he isn't Jamie!"

"O dear! Are you sure?"

There was a moment's pause, then Mrs. Carew covered her face with her hands.

"No, I'm not sure—and that's the tragedy of it," she moaned. "I don't think he is; I'm almost positive he isn't. But, of course, there IS a chance—and that's what's killing me."

"Then can't you just THINK he's Jamie," begged Pollyanna, "and play he was? Then you could take him home, and—" But Mrs. Carew turned fiercely.

"Take that boy into my home when he WASN'T Jamie? Never, Pollyanna! I couldn't."

"But if you CAN'T help Jamie, I should think you'd be so glad there was some one like him you COULD help," urged Pollyanna, tremulously. "What if your Jamie was like this Jamie, all poor and sick, wouldn't you want some one to take him in and comfort him, and—" "Don't—don't, Pollyanna," moaned Mrs. Carew, turning her head from side to side, in a frenzy of grief. "When I think that maybe, somewhere, our Jamie is like that—" Only a choking sob finished the sentence.

"That's just what I mean—that's just what I mean!" triumphed Pollyanna, excitedly. "Don't you see? If this IS your Jamie, of course you'll want him; and if it isn't, you couldn't be doing any harm to the other Jamie by taking this one, and you'd do a whole lot of good, for you'd make this one so happy—so happy! And then, by and by, if you should find the real Jamie, you wouldn't have lost anything, but you'd have made two little boys happy instead of one; and—" But again Mrs. Carew interrupted her.

"Don't, Pollyanna, don't! I want to think—I want to think."

Tearfully Pollyanna sat back in her seat. By a very visible effort she kept still for one whole minute. Then, as if the words fairly bubbled forth of themselves, there came this:

"Oh, but what an awful, awful place that was! I just wish the man that owned it had to live in it himself—and then see what he'd have to be glad for!"

Mrs. Carew sat suddenly erect. Her face showed a curious change. Almost as if in appeal she flung out her hand toward Pollyanna.

"Don't!" she cried. "Perhaps—she didn't know, Pollyanna. Perhaps she didn't know. I'm sure she didn't know—she owned a place like that. But it will be fixed now—it will be fixed."

"SHE! Is it a woman that owns it, and do you know her? And do you know the agent, too?"

"Yes." Mrs. Carew bit her lips. "I know her, and I know the agent."

"Oh, I'm so glad," sighed Pollyanna. "Then it'll be all right now."

"Well, it certainly will be—better," avowed Mrs. Carew with emphasis, as the car stopped before her own door.

Mrs. Carew spoke as if she knew what she was talking about. And perhaps, indeed, she did—better than she cared to tell Pollyanna. Certainly, before she slept that night, a letter left her hands addressed to one Henry Dodge, summoning him to an immediate conference as to certain changes and repairs to be made at once in tenements she owned. There were, moreover, several scathing sentences concerning "rag-stuffed windows," and "rickety stairways," that caused this same Henry Dodge to scowl angrily, and to say a sharp word behind his teeth—though at the same time he paled with something very like fear.



CHAPTER XI

A SURPRISE FOR MRS. CAREW

The matter of repairs and improvements having been properly and efficiently attended to, Mrs. Carew told herself that she had done her duty, and that the matter was closed. She would forget it. The boy was not Jamie—he could not be Jamie. That ignorant, sickly, crippled boy her dead sister's son? Impossible! She would cast the whole thing from her thoughts.

It was just here, however, that Mrs. Carew found herself against an immovable, impassable barrier: the whole thing refused to be cast from her thoughts. Always before her eyes was the picture of that bare little room and the wistful-faced boy. Always in her ears was that heartbreaking "What if it WERE Jamie?" And always, too, there was Pollyanna; for even though Mrs. Carew might (as she did) silence the pleadings and questionings of the little girl's tongue, there was no getting away from the prayers and reproaches of the little girl's eyes.

Twice again in desperation Mrs. Carew went to see the boy, telling herself each time that only another visit was needed to convince her that the boy was not the one she sought. But, even though while there in the boy's presence, she told herself that she WAS convinced, once away from it, the old, old questioning returned. At last, in still greater desperation, she wrote to her sister, and told her the whole story.

"I had not meant to tell you," she wrote, after she had stated the bare facts of the case. "I thought it a pity to harrow you up, or to raise false hopes. I am so sure it is not he—and yet, even as I write these words, I know I am NOT sure. That is why I want you to come—why you must come. I must have you see him.

"I wonder—oh, I wonder what you'll say! Of course we haven't seen our Jamie since he was four years old. He would be twelve now. This boy is twelve, I should judge. (He doesn't know his age.) He has hair and eyes not unlike our Jamie's. He is crippled, but that condition came upon him through a fall, six years ago, and was made worse through another one four years later. Anything like a complete description of his father's appearance seems impossible to obtain; but what I have learned contains nothing conclusive either for or against his being poor Doris's husband. He was called 'the Professor,' was very queer, and seemed to own nothing save a few books. This might, or might not signify. John Kent was certainly always queer, and a good deal of a Bohemian in his tastes. Whether he cared for books or not I don't remember. Do you? And of course the title 'Professor' might easily have been assumed, if he wished, or it might have been merely given him by others. As for this boy—I don't know, I don't know—but I do hope YOU will!

"Your distracted sister,

"RUTH."

Della came at once, and she went immediately to see the boy; but she did not "know." Like her sister, she said she did not think it was their Jamie, but at the same time there was that chance—it might be he, after all. Like Pollyanna, however, she had what she thought was a very satisfactory way out of the dilemma.

"But why don't you take him, dear?" she proposed to her sister. "Why don't you take him and adopt him? It would be lovely for him—poor little fellow—and—" But Mrs. Carew shuddered and would not even let her finish.

"No, no, I can't, I can't!" she moaned. "I want my Jamie, my own Jamie—or no one." And with a sigh Della gave it up and went back to her nursing.

If Mrs. Carew thought that this closed the matter, however, she was again mistaken; for her days were still restless, and her nights were still either sleepless or filled with dreams of a "may be" or a "might be" masquerading as an "it is so." She was, moreover, having a difficult time with Pollyanna.

Pollyanna was puzzled. She was filled with questionings and unrest. For the first time in her life Pollyanna had come face to face with real poverty. She knew people who did not have enough to eat, who wore ragged clothing, and who lived in dark, dirty, and very tiny rooms. Her first impulse, of course, had been "to help." With Mrs. Carew she made two visits to Jamie, and greatly did she rejoice at the changed conditions she found there after "that man Dodge" had "tended to things." But this, to Pollyanna, was a mere drop in the bucket. There were yet all those other sick-looking men, unhappy-looking women, and ragged children out in the street—Jamie's neighbors. Confidently she looked to Mrs. Carew for help for them, also.

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew, when she learned what was expected of her, "so you want the whole street to be supplied with fresh paper, paint, and new stairways, do you? Pray, is there anything else you'd like?"

"Oh, yes, lots of things," sighed Pollyanna, happily. "You see, there are so many things they need—all of them! And what fun it will be to get them! How I wish I was rich so I could help, too; but I'm 'most as glad to be with you when you get them."

Mrs. Carew quite gasped aloud in her amazement. She lost no time—though she did lose not a little patience—in explaining that she had no intention of doing anything further in "Murphy's Alley," and that there was no reason why she should. No one would expect her to. She had canceled all possible obligations, and had even been really very generous, any one would say, in what she had done for the tenement where lived Jamie and the Murphys. (That she owned the tenement building she did not think it necessary to state.) At some length she explained to Pollyanna that there were charitable institutions, both numerous and efficient, whose business it was to aid all the worthy poor, and that to these institutions she gave frequently and liberally.

Even then, however, Pollyanna was not convinced.

"But I don't see," she argued, "why it's any better, or even so nice, for a whole lot of folks to club together and do what everybody would like to do for themselves. I'm sure I'd much rather give Jamie a—a nice book, now, than to have some old Society do it; and I KNOW he'd like better to have me do it, too."

"Very likely," returned Mrs. Carew, with some weariness and a little exasperation. "But it is just possible that it would not be so well for Jamie as—as if that book were given by a body of people who knew what sort of one to select."

This led her to say much, also (none of which Pollyanna in the least understood), about "pauperizing the poor," the "evils of indiscriminate giving," and the "pernicious effect of unorganized charity."

"Besides," she added, in answer to the still perplexed expression on Pollyanna's worried little face, "very likely if I offered help to these people they would not take it. You remember Mrs. Murphy declined, at the first, to let me send food and clothing—though they accepted it readily enough from their neighbors on the first floor, it seems."

"Yes, I know," sighed Pollyanna, turning away. "There's something there somehow that I don't understand. But it doesn't seem right that WE should have such a lot of nice things, and that THEY shouldn't have anything, hardly."

As the days passed, this feeling on the part of Pollyanna increased rather than diminished; and the questions she asked and the comments she made were anything but a relief to the state of mind in which Mrs. Carew herself was. Even the test of the glad game, in this case, Pollyanna was finding to be very near a failure; for, as she expressed it:

"I don't see how you can find anything about this poor-people business to be glad for. Of course we can be glad for ourselves that we aren't poor like them; but whenever I'm thinking how glad I am for that, I get so sorry for them that I CAN'T be glad any longer. Of course we COULD be glad there were poor folks, because we could help them. But if we DON'T help them, where's the glad part of that coming in?" And to this Pollyanna could find no one who could give her a satisfactory answer.

Especially she asked this question of Mrs. Carew; and Mrs. Carew, still haunted by the visions of the Jamie that was, and the Jamie that might be, grew only more restless, more wretched, and more utterly despairing. Nor was she helped any by the approach of Christmas. Nowhere was there glow of holly or flash of tinsel that did not carry its pang to her; for always to Mrs. Carew it but symbolized a child's empty stocking—a stocking that might be—Jamie's.

Finally, a week before Christmas, she fought what she thought was the last battle with herself. Resolutely, but with no real joy in her face, she gave terse orders to Mary, and summoned Pollyanna.

"Pollyanna," she began, almost harshly, "I have decided to—to take Jamie. The car will be here at once. I'm going after him now, and bring him home. You may come with me if you like."

A great light transfigured Pollyanna's face.

"Oh, oh, oh, how glad I am!" she breathed. "Why, I'm so glad I—I want to cry! Mrs. Carew, why is it, when you're the very gladdest of anything, you always want to cry?"

"I don't know, I'm sure, Pollyanna," rejoined Mrs. Carew, abstractedly. On Mrs. Carew's face there was still no look of joy.

Once in the Murphys' little one-room tenement, it did not take Mrs. Carew long to tell her errand. In a few short sentences she told the story of the lost Jamie, and of her first hopes that this Jamie might be he. She made no secret of her doubts that he was the one; at the same time, she said she had decided to take him home with her and give him every possible advantage. Then, a little wearily, she told what were the plans she had made for him.

At the foot of the bed Mrs. Murphy listened, crying softly. Across the room Jerry Murphy, his eyes dilating, emitted an occasional low "Gee! Can ye beat that, now?" As to Jamie—Jamie, on the bed, had listened at first with the air of one to whom suddenly a door has opened into a longed-for paradise; but gradually, as Mrs. Carew talked, a new look came to his eyes. Very slowly he closed them, and turned away his face.

When Mrs. Carew ceased speaking there was a long silence before Jamie turned his head and answered. They saw then that his face was very white, and that his eyes were full of tears.

"Thank you, Mrs. Carew, but—I can't go," he said simply.

"You can't—what?" cried Mrs. Carew, as if she doubted the evidence of her own ears.

"Jamie!" gasped Pollyanna.

"Oh, come, kid, what's eatin' ye?" scowled Jerry, hurriedly coming forward. "Don't ye know a good thing when ye see it?"

"Yes; but I can't—go," said the crippled boy, again.

"But, Jamie, Jamie, think, THINK what it would mean to you!" quavered Mrs. Murphy, at the foot of the bed.

"I am a-thinkin'," choked Jamie. "Don't you suppose I know what I'm doin'—what I'm givin' up?" Then to Mrs. Carew he turned tear-wet eyes. "I can't," he faltered. "I can't let you do all that for me. If you—CARED it would be different. But you don't care—not really. You don't WANT me—not ME. You want the real Jamie, and I ain't the real Jamie. You don't think I am. I can see it in your face."

"I know. But—but—" began Mrs. Carew, helplessly.

"And it isn't as if—as if I was like other boys, and could walk, either," interrupted the cripple, feverishly. "You'd get tired of me in no time. And I'd see it comin'. I couldn't stand it—to be a burden like that. Of course, if you CARED—like mumsey here—" He threw out his hand, choked back a sob, then turned his head away again. "I'm not the Jamie you want. I—can't—go," he said. With the words his thin, boyish hand fell clenched till the knuckles showed white against the tattered old shawl that covered the bed.

There was a moment's breathless hush, then, very quietly, Mrs. Carew got to her feet. Her face was colorless; but there was that in it that silenced the sob that rose to Pollyanna's lips.

"Come, Pollyanna," was all she said.

"Well, if you ain't the fool limit!" babbled Jerry Murphy to the boy on the bed, as the door closed a moment later.

But the boy on the bed was crying very much as if the closing door had been the one that had led to paradise—and that had closed now forever.



CHAPTER XII

FROM BEHIND A COUNTER

Mrs. Carew was very angry. To have brought herself to the point where she was willing to take this lame boy into her home, and then to have the lad calmly refuse to come, was unbearable. Mrs. Carew was not in the habit of having her invitations ignored, or her wishes scorned. Furthermore, now that she could not have the boy, she was conscious of an almost frantic terror lest he were, after all, the real Jamie. She knew then that her true reason for wanting him had been—not because she cared for him, not even because she wished to help him and make him happy—but because she hoped, by taking him, that she would ease her own mind, and forever silence that awful eternal questioning on her part: "What if he WERE her own Jamie?"

It certainly had not helped matters any that the boy had divined her state of mind, and had given as the reason for his refusal that she "did not care." To be sure, Mrs. Carew now very proudly told herself that she did not indeed "care," that he was NOT her sister's boy, and that she would "forget all about it."

But she did not forget all about it. However insistently she might disclaim responsibility and relationship, just as insistently responsibility and relationship thrust themselves upon her in the shape of panicky doubts; and however resolutely she turned her thoughts to other matters, just so resolutely visions of a wistful-eyed boy in a poverty-stricken room loomed always before her.

Then, too, there was Pollyanna. Clearly Pollyanna was not herself at all. In a most unPollyanna-like spirit she moped about the house, finding apparently no interest anywhere.

"Oh, no, I'm not sick," she would answer, when remonstrated with, and questioned.

"But what IS the trouble?"

"Why, nothing. It—it's only that I was thinking of Jamie, you know,—how HE hasn't got all these beautiful things—carpets, and pictures, and curtains."

It was the same with her food. Pollyanna was actually losing her appetite; but here again she disclaimed sickness.

"Oh, no," she would sigh mournfully. "It's just that I don't seem hungry. Some way, just as soon as I begin to eat, I think of Jamie, and how HE doesn't have only old doughnuts and dry rolls; and then I—I don't want anything."

Mrs. Carew, spurred by a feeling that she herself only dimly understood, and recklessly determined to bring about some change in Pollyanna at all costs, ordered a huge tree, two dozen wreaths, and quantities of holly and Christmas baubles. For the first time in many years the house was aflame and aglitter with scarlet and tinsel. There was even to be a Christmas party, for Mrs. Carew had told Pollyanna to invite half a dozen of her schoolgirl friends for the tree on Christmas Eve.

But even here Mrs. Carew met with disappointment; for, though Pollyanna was always grateful, and at times interested and even excited, she still carried frequently a sober little face. And in the end the Christmas party was more of a sorrow than a joy; for the first glimpse of the glittering tree sent her into a storm of sobs.

"Why, Pollyanna!" ejaculated Mrs. Carew. "What in the world is the matter now?"

"N-n-nothing," wept Pollyanna. "It's only that it's so perfectly, perfectly beautiful that I just had to cry. I was thinking how Jamie would love to see it."

It was then that Mrs. Carew's patience snapped.

"'Jamie, Jamie, Jamie'!" she exclaimed. "Pollyanna, CAN'T you stop talking about that boy? You know perfectly well that it is not my fault that he is not here. I asked him to come here to live. Besides, where is that glad game of yours? I think it would be an excellent idea if you would play it on this."

"I AM playing it," quavered Pollyanna. "And that's what I don't understand. I never knew it to act so funny. Why, before, when I've been glad about things, I've been happy. But now, about Jamie—I'm so glad I've got carpets and pictures and nice things to eat, and that I can walk and run, and go to school, and all that; but the harder I'm glad for myself, the sorrier I am for him. I never knew the game to act so funny, and I don't know what ails it. Do you?"

But Mrs. Carew, with a despairing gesture, merely turned away without a word.

It was the day after Christmas that something so wonderful happened that Pollyanna, for a time, almost forgot Jamie. Mrs. Carew had taken her shopping, and it was while Mrs. Carew was trying to decide between a duchesse-lace and a point-lace collar, that Pollyanna chanced to spy farther down the counter a face that looked vaguely familiar. For a moment she regarded it frowningly; then, with a little cry, she ran down the aisle.

"Oh, it's you—it IS you!" she exclaimed joyously to a girl who was putting into the show case a tray of pink bows. "I'm so glad to see you!"

The girl behind the counter lifted her head and stared at Pollyanna in amazement. But almost immediately her dark, somber face lighted with a smile of glad recognition.

"Well, well, if it isn't my little Public Garden kiddie!" she ejaculated.

"Yes. I'm so glad you remembered," beamed Pollyanna. "But you never came again. I looked for you lots of times."

"I couldn't. I had to work. That was our last half-holiday, and—Fifty cents, madam," she broke off, in answer to a sweet-faced old lady's question as to the price of a black-and-white bow on the counter.

"Fifty cents? Hm-m!" The old lady fingered the bow, hesitated, then laid it down with a sigh. "Hm, yes; well, it's very pretty, I'm sure, my dear," she said, as she passed on.

Immediately behind her came two bright-faced girls who, with much giggling and bantering, picked out a jeweled creation of scarlet velvet, and a fairy-like structure of tulle and pink buds. As the girls turned chattering away Pollyanna drew an ecstatic sigh.

"Is this what you do all day? My, how glad you must be you chose this!"

"GLAD!"

"Yes. It must be such fun—such lots of folks, you know, and all different! And you can talk to 'em. You HAVE to talk to 'em—it's your business. I should love that. I think I'll do this when I grow up. It must be such fun to see what they all buy!"

"Fun! Glad!" bristled the girl behind the counter. "Well, child, I guess if you knew half—That's a dollar, madam," she interrupted herself hastily, in answer to a young woman's sharp question as to the price of a flaring yellow bow of beaded velvet in the show case.

"Well, I should think 'twas time you told me," snapped the young woman. "I had to ask you twice."

The girl behind the counter bit her lip.

"I didn't hear you, madam."

"I can't help that. It is your business TO hear. You are paid for it, aren't you? How much is that black one?"

"Fifty cents."

"And that blue one?"

"One dollar."

"No impudence, miss! You needn't be so short about it, or I shall report you. Let me see that tray of pink ones."

The salesgirl's lips opened, then closed in a thin, straight line. Obediently she reached into the show case and took out the tray of pink bows; but her eyes flashed, and her hands shook visibly as she set the tray down on the counter. The young woman whom she was serving picked up five bows, asked the price of four of them, then turned away with a brief:

"I see nothing I care for."

"Well," said the girl behind the counter, in a shaking voice, to the wide-eyed Pollyanna, "what do you think of my business now? Anything to be glad about there?"

Pollyanna giggled a little hysterically.

"My, wasn't she cross? But she was kind of funny, too—don't you think? Anyhow, you can be glad that—that they aren't ALL like HER, can't you?"

"I suppose so," said the girl, with a faint smile, "But I can tell you right now, kiddie, that glad game of yours you was tellin' me about that day in the Garden may be all very well for you; but—" Once more she stopped with a tired: "Fifty cents, madam," in answer to a question from the other side of the counter.

"Are you as lonesome as ever?" asked Pollyanna wistfully, when the salesgirl was at liberty again.

"Well, I can't say I've given more'n five parties, nor been to more'n seven, since I saw you," replied the girl so bitterly that Pollyanna detected the sarcasm.

"Oh, but you did something nice Christmas, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes. I stayed in bed all day with my feet done up in rags and read four newspapers and one magazine. Then at night I hobbled out to a restaurant where I had to blow in thirty-five cents for chicken pie instead of a quarter."