Then she turned to Jamie. Here again she was surprised, and for much the same reason. Jamie, too, had grown handsome. To herself Pollyanna declared that he was really distinguished looking. His dark eyes, rather pale face, and dark, waving hair she thought most attractive. Then she caught a glimpse of the crutches at his side, and a spasm of aching sympathy contracted her throat.

From Jamie Pollyanna turned to Sadie Dean.

Sadie, so far as features went, looked much as she had when Pollyanna first saw her in the Public Garden; but Pollyanna did not need a second glance to know that Sadie, so far as hair, dress, temper, speech, and disposition were concerned, was a very different Sadie indeed.

Then Jamie spoke.

"How good you were to let us come," he said to Pollyanna. "Do you know what I thought of when you wrote that we could come?"

"Why, n-no, of course not," stammered Pollyanna. Pollyanna was still seeing the crutches at Jamie's side, and her throat was still tightened from that aching sympathy.

"Well, I thought of the little maid in the Public Garden with her bag of peanuts for Sir Lancelot and Lady Guinevere, and I knew that you were just putting us in their places, for if you had a bag of peanuts, and we had none, you wouldn't be happy till you'd shared it with us."

"A bag of peanuts, indeed!" laughed Pollyanna.

"Oh, of course in this case, your bag of peanuts happened to be airy country rooms, and cow's milk, and real eggs from a real hen's nest," returned Jamie whimsically; "but it amounts to the same thing. And maybe I'd better warn you—you remember how greedy Sir Lancelot was;—well—" He paused meaningly.

"All right, I'll take the risk," dimpled Pollyanna, thinking how glad she was that Aunt Polly was not present to hear her worst predictions so nearly fulfilled thus early. "Poor Sir Lancelot! I wonder if anybody feeds him now, or if he's there at all."

"Well, if he's there, he's fed," interposed Mrs. Carew, merrily. "This ridiculous boy still goes down there at least once a week with his pockets bulging with peanuts and I don't know what all. He can be traced any time by the trail of small grains he leaves behind him; and half the time, when I order my cereal for breakfast it isn't forthcoming, because, forsooth, 'Master Jamie has fed it to the pigeons, ma'am!'"

"Yes, but let me tell you," plunged in Jamie, enthusiastically. And the next minute Pollyanna found herself listening with all the old fascination to a story of a couple of squirrels in a sunlit garden. Later she saw what Della Wetherby had meant in her letter, for when the house was reached, it came as a distinct shock to her to see Jamie pick up his crutches and swing himself out of the carriage with their aid. She knew then that already in ten short minutes he had made her forget that he was lame.

To Pollyanna's great relief that first dreaded meeting between Aunt Polly and the Carew party passed off much better than she had feared. The newcomers were so frankly delighted with the old house and everything in it, that it was an utter impossibility for the mistress and owner of it all to continue her stiff attitude of disapproving resignation to their presence. Besides, as was plainly evident before an hour had passed, the personal charm and magnetism of Jamie had pierced even Aunt Polly's armor of distrust; and Pollyanna knew that at least one of her own most dreaded problems was a problem no longer, for already Aunt Polly was beginning to play the stately, yet gracious hostess to these, her guests.

Notwithstanding her relief at Aunt Polly's change of attitude, however, Pollyanna did not find that all was smooth sailing, by any means. There was work, and plenty of it, that must be done. Nancy's sister, Betty, was pleasant and willing, but she was not Nancy, as Pollyanna soon found. She needed training, and training took time. Pollyanna worried, too, for fear everything should not be quite right. To Pollyanna, those days, a dusty chair was a crime and a fallen cake a tragedy.

Gradually, however, after incessant arguments and pleadings on the part of Mrs. Carew and Jamie, Pollyanna came to take her tasks more easily, and to realize that the real crime and tragedy in her friends' eyes was, not the dusty chair nor the fallen cake, but the frown of worry and anxiety on her own face.

"Just as if it wasn't enough for you to LET us come," Jamie declared, "without just killing yourself with work to get us something to eat."

"Besides, we ought not to eat so much, anyway," Mrs. Carew laughed, "or else we shall get 'digestion,' as one of my girls calls it when her food disagrees with her."

It was wonderful, after all, how easily the three new members of the family fitted into the daily life. Before twenty-four hours had passed, Mrs. Carew had gotten Mrs. Chilton to asking really interested questions about the new Home for Working Girls, and Sadie Dean and Jamie were quarreling over the chance to help with the pea-shelling or the flower-picking.

The Carews had been at the Harrington homestead nearly a week when one evening John Pendleton and Jimmy called. Pollyanna had been hoping they would come soon. She had, indeed, urged it very strongly before the Carews came. She made the introductions now with visible pride.

"You are such good friends of mine, I want you to know each other, and be good friends together," she explained.

That Jimmy and Mr. Pendleton should be clearly impressed with the charm and beauty of Mrs. Carew did not surprise Pollyanna in the least; but the look that came into Mrs. Carew's face at sight of Jimmy did surprise her very much. It was almost a look of recognition.

"Why, Mr. Pendleton, haven't I met you before?" Mrs. Carew cried.

Jimmy's frank eyes met Mrs. Carew's gaze squarely, admiringly.

"I think not," he smiled back at her. "I'm sure I never have met you. I should have remembered it—if I had met YOU," he bowed.

So unmistakable was his significant emphasis that everybody laughed, and John Pendleton chuckled:

"Well done, son—for a youth of your tender years. I couldn't have done half so well myself."

Mrs. Carew flushed slightly and joined in the laugh.

"No, but really," she urged; "joking aside, there certainly is a strangely familiar something in your face. I think I must have SEEN you somewhere, if I haven't actually met you."

"And maybe you have," cried Pollyanna, "in Boston. Jimmy goes to Tech there winters, you know. Jimmy's going to build bridges and dams, you see—when he grows up, I mean," she finished with a merry glance at the big six-foot fellow still standing before Mrs. Carew.

Everybody laughed again—that is, everybody but Jamie; and only Sadie Dean noticed that Jamie, instead of laughing, closed his eyes as if at the sight of something that hurt. And only Sadie Dean knew how—and why—the subject was so quickly changed, for it was Sadie herself who changed it. It was Sadie, too, who, when the opportunity came, saw to it that books and flowers and beasts and birds—things that Jamie knew and understood—were talked about as well as dams and bridges which (as Sadie knew), Jamie could never build. That Sadie did all this, however, was not realized by anybody, least of all by Jamie, the one who most of all was concerned.

When the call was over and the Pendletons had gone, Mrs. Carew referred again to the curiously haunting feeling that somewhere she had seen young Pendleton before.

"I have, I know I have—somewhere," she declared musingly. "Of course it may have been in Boston; but—" She let the sentence remain unfinished; then, after a minute she added: "He's a fine young fellow, anyway. I like him."

"I'm so glad! I do, too," nodded Pollyanna. "I've always liked Jimmy."

"You've known him some time, then?" queried Jamie, a little wistfully.

"Oh, yes. I knew him years ago when I was a little girl, you know. He was Jimmy Bean then."

"Jimmy BEAN! Why, isn't he Mr. Pendleton's son?" asked Mrs. Carew, in surprise.

"No, only by adoption."

"Adoption!" exclaimed Jamie. "Then HE isn't a real son any more than I am." There was a curious note of almost joy in the lad's voice.

"No. Mr. Pendleton hasn't any children. He never married. He—he was going to, once, but he—he didn't." Pollyanna blushed and spoke with sudden diffidence. Pollyanna had never forgotten that it was her mother who, in the long ago, had said no to this same John Pendleton, and who had thus been responsible for the man's long, lonely years of bachelorhood.

Mrs. Carew and Jamie, however, being unaware of this, and seeing now only the blush on Pollyanna's cheek and the diffidence in her manner, drew suddenly the same conclusion.

"Is it possible," they asked themselves, "that this man, John Pendleton, ever had a love affair with Pollyanna, child that she is?"

Naturally they did not say this aloud; so, naturally, there was no answer possible. Naturally, too, perhaps, the thought, though unspoken, was still not forgotten, but was tucked away in a corner of their minds for future reference—if need arose.



CHAPTER XXI

SUMMER DAYS

Before the Carews came, Pollyanna had told Jimmy that she was depending on him to help her entertain them. Jimmy had not expressed himself then as being overwhelmingly desirous to serve her in this way; but before the Carews had been in town a fortnight, he had shown himself as not only willing but anxious,—judging by the frequency and length of his calls, and the lavishness of his offers of the Pendleton horses and motor cars.

Between him and Mrs. Carew there sprang up at once a warm friendship based on what seemed to be a peculiarly strong attraction for each other. They walked and talked together, and even made sundry plans for the Home for Working Girls, to be carried out the following winter when Jimmy should be in Boston. Jamie, too, came in for a good measure of attention, nor was Sadie Dean forgotten. Sadie, as Mrs. Carew plainly showed, was to be regarded as if she were quite one of the family; and Mrs. Carew was careful to see that she had full share in any plans for merrymaking.

Nor did Jimmy always come alone with his offers for entertainment. More and more frequently John Pendleton appeared with him. Rides and drives and picnics were planned and carried out, and long delightful afternoons were spent over books and fancy-work on the Harrington veranda.

Pollyanna was delighted. Not only were her paying guests being kept from any possibilities of ennui and homesickness, but her good friends, the Carews, were becoming delightfully acquainted with her other good friends, the Pendletons. So, like a mother hen with a brood of chickens, she hovered over the veranda meetings, and did everything in her power to keep the group together and happy.

Neither the Carews nor the Pendletons, however, were at all satisfied to have Pollyanna merely an onlooker in their pastimes, and very strenuously they urged her to join them. They would not take no for an answer, indeed, and Pollyanna very frequently found the way opened for her.

"Just as if we were going to have you poked up in this hot kitchen frosting cake!" Jamie scolded one day, after he had penetrated the fastnesses of her domain. "It is a perfectly glorious morning, and we're all going over to the Gorge and take our luncheon. And YOU are going with us."

"But, Jamie, I can't—indeed I can't," refused Pollyanna.

"Why not? You won't have dinner to get for us, for we sha'n't be here to eat it."

"But there's the—the luncheon."

"Wrong again. We'll have the luncheon with us, so you CAN'T stay home to get that. Now what's to hinder your going along WITH the luncheon, eh?"

"Why, Jamie, I—I can't. There's the cake to frost—"

"Don't want it frosted."

"And the dusting—"

"Don't want it dusted."

"And the ordering to do for to-morrow."

"Give us crackers and milk. We'd lots rather have you and crackers and milk than a turkey dinner and not you."

"But I can't begin to tell you the things I've got to do to-day."

"Don't want you to begin to tell me," retorted Jamie, cheerfully. "I want you to stop telling me. Come, put on your bonnet. I saw Betty in the dining room, and she says she'll put our luncheon up. Now hurry."

"Why, Jamie, you ridiculous boy, I can't go," laughed Pollyanna, holding feebly back, as he tugged at her dress-sleeve. "I can't go to that picnic with you!"

But she went. She went not only then, but again and again. She could not help going, indeed, for she found arrayed against her not only Jamie, but Jimmy and Mr. Pendleton, to say nothing of Mrs. Carew and Sadie Dean, and even Aunt Polly herself.

"And of course I AM glad to go," she would sigh happily, when some dreary bit of work was taken out of her hands in spite of all protesting. "But, surely, never before were there any boarders like mine—teasing for crackers-and-milk and cold things; and never before was there a boarding mistress like me—running around the country after this fashion!"

The climax came when one day John Pendleton (and Aunt Polly never ceased to exclaim because it WAS John Pendleton)—suggested that they all go on a two weeks' camping trip to a little lake up among the mountains forty miles from Beldingsville.

The idea was received with enthusiastic approbation by everybody except Aunt Polly. Aunt Polly said, privately, to Pollyanna, that it was all very good and well and desirable that John Pendleton should have gotten out of the sour, morose aloofness that had been his state for so many years, but that it did not necessarily follow that it was equally desirable that he should be trying to turn himself into a twenty-year-old boy again; and that was what, in her opinion, he seemed to be doing now! Publicly she contented herself with saying coldly that SHE certainly should not go on any insane camping trip to sleep on damp ground and eat bugs and spiders, under the guise of "fun," nor did she think it a sensible thing for anybody over forty to do.

If John Pendleton felt any wound from this shaft, he made no sign. Certainly there was no diminution of apparent interest and enthusiasm on his part, and the plans for the camping expedition came on apace, for it was unanimously decided that, even if Aunt Polly would not go, that was no reason why the rest should not.

"And Mrs. Carew will be all the chaperon we need, anyhow," Jimmy had declared airily.

For a week, therefore, little was talked of but tents, food supplies, cameras, and fishing tackle, and little was done that was not a preparation in some way for the trip.

"And let's make it the real thing," proposed Jimmy, eagerly, "—yes, even to Mrs. Chilton's bugs and spiders," he added, with a merry smile straight into that lady's severely disapproving eyes. "None of your log-cabin-central-dining-room idea for us! We want real camp-fires with potatoes baked in the ashes, and we want to sit around and tell stories and roast corn on a stick."

"And we want to swim and row and fish," chimed in Pollyanna. "And—" She stopped suddenly, her eyes on Jamie's face. "That is, of course," she corrected quickly, "we wouldn't want to—to do those things all the time. There'd be a lot of QUIET things we'd want to do, too—read and talk, you know."

Jamie's eyes darkened. His face grew a little white. His lips parted, but before any words came, Sadie Dean was speaking.

"Oh, but on camping trips and picnics, you know, we EXPECT to do outdoor stunts," she interposed feverishly; "and I'm sure we WANT to. Last summer we were down in Maine, and you should have seen the fish Mr. Carew caught. It was—You tell it," she begged, turning to Jamie.

Jamie laughed and shook his head.

"They'd never believe it," he objected; "—a fish story like that!"

"Try us," challenged Pollyanna.

Jamie still shook his head—but the color had come back to his face, and his eyes were no longer somber as if with pain. Pollyanna, glancing at Sadie Dean, vaguely wondered why she suddenly settled back in her seat with so very evident an air of relief.

At last the appointed day came, and the start was made in John Pendleton's big new touring car with Jimmy at the wheel. A whir, a throbbing rumble, a chorus of good-bys, and they were off, with one long shriek of the siren under Jimmy's mischievous fingers.

In after days Pollyanna often went back in her thoughts to that first night in camp. The experience was so new and so wonderful in so many ways.

It was four o'clock when their forty-mile automobile journey came to an end. Since half-past three their big car had been ponderously picking its way over an old logging-road not designed for six-cylinder automobiles. For the car itself, and for the hand at the wheel, this part of the trip was a most wearing one; but for the merry passengers, who had no responsibility concerning hidden holes and muddy curves, it was nothing but a delight growing more poignant with every new vista through the green arches, and with every echoing laugh that dodged the low-hanging branches.

The site for the camp was one known to John Pendleton years before, and he greeted it now with a satisfied delight that was not unmingled with relief.

"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" chorused the others.

"Glad you like it! I thought it would be about right," nodded John Pendleton. "Still, I was a little anxious, after all, for these places do change, you know, most remarkably sometimes. And of course this has grown up to bushes a little—but not so but what we can easily clear it."

Everybody fell to work then, clearing the ground, putting up the two little tents, unloading the automobile, building the camp fire, and arranging the "kitchen and pantry."

It was then that Pollyanna began especially to notice Jamie, and to fear for him. She realized suddenly that the hummocks and hollows and pine-littered knolls were not like a carpeted floor for a pair of crutches, and she saw that Jamie was realizing it, too. She saw, also, that in spite of his infirmity, he was trying to take his share in the work; and the sight troubled her. Twice she hurried forward and intercepted him, taking from his arms the box he was trying to carry.

"Here, let me take that," she begged. "You've done enough." And the second time she added: "Do go and sit down somewhere to rest, Jamie. You look so tired!"

If she had been watching closely she would have seen the quick color sweep to his forehead. But she was not watching, so she did not see it. She did see, however, to her intense surprise, Sadie Dean hurry forward a moment later, her arms full of boxes, and heard her cry:

"Oh, Mr. Carew, please, if you WOULD give me a lift with these!"

The next moment, Jamie, once more struggling with the problem of managing a bundle of boxes and two crutches, was hastening toward the tents.

With a quick word of protest on her tongue, Pollyanna turned to Sadie Dean. But the protest died unspoken, for Sadie, her finger to her lips, was hurrying straight toward her.

"I know you didn't think," she stammered in a low voice, as she reached Pollyanna's side. "But, don't you see?—it HURTS him—to have you think he can't do things like other folks. There, look! See how happy he is now."

Pollyanna looked, and she saw. She saw Jamie, his whole self alert, deftly balance his weight on one crutch and swing his burden to the ground. She saw the happy light on his face, and she heard him say nonchalantly:

"Here's another contribution from Miss Dean. She asked me to bring this over."

"Why, yes, I see," breathed Pollyanna, turning to Sadie Dean. But Sadie Dean had gone.

Pollyanna watched Jamie a good deal after that, though she was careful not to let him, or any one else, see that she was watching him. And as she watched, her heart ached. Twice she saw him essay a task and fail: once with a box too heavy for him to lift; once with a folding-table too unwieldy for him to carry with his crutches. And each time she saw his quick glance about him to see if others noticed. She saw, too, that unmistakably he was getting very tired, and that his face, in spite of its gay smile, was looking white and drawn, as if he were in pain.

"I should think we might have known more," stormed Pollyanna hotly to herself, her eyes blinded with tears. "I should think we might have known more than to have let him come to a place like this. Camping, indeed!—and with a pair of crutches! Why couldn't we have remembered before we started?"

An hour later, around the camp fire after supper, Pollyanna had her answer to this question; for, with the glowing fire before her, and the soft, fragrant dark all about her, she once more fell under the spell of the witchery that fell from Jamie's lips; and she once more forgot—Jamie's crutches.



CHAPTER XXII

COMRADES

They were a merry party—the six of them—and a congenial one. There seemed to be no end to the new delights that came with every new day, not the least of which was the new charm of companionship that seemed to be a part of this new life they were living.

As Jamie said one night, when they were all sitting about the fire:

"You see, we seem to know each other so much better up here in the woods—better in a week than we would in a year in town."

"I know it. I wonder why," murmured Mrs. Carew, her eyes dreamily following the leaping blaze.

"I think it's something in the air," sighed Pollyanna, happily. "There's something about the sky and the woods and the lake so—so—well, there just is; that's all."

"I think you mean, because the world is shut out," cried Sadie Dean, with a curious little break in her voice. (Sadie had not joined in the laugh that followed Pollyanna's limping conclusion.) "Up here everything is so real and true that we, too, can be our real true selves—not what the world SAYS we are because we are rich, or poor, or great, or humble; but what we really are, OURSELVES."

"Ho!" scoffed Jimmy, airily. "All that sounds very fine; but the real common-sense reason is because we don't have any Mrs. Tom and Dick and Harry sitting on their side porches and commenting on every time we stir, and wondering among themselves where we are going, why we are going there, and how long we're intending to stay!"

"Oh, Jimmy, how you do take the poetry out of things," reproached Pollyanna, laughingly.

"But that's my business," flashed Jimmy. "How do you suppose I'm going to build dams and bridges if I don't see something besides poetry in the waterfall?"

"You can't, Pendleton! And it's the bridge—that counts—every time," declared Jamie in a voice that brought a sudden hush to the group about the fire. It was for only a moment, however, for almost at once Sadie Dean broke the silence with a gay:

"Pooh! I'd rather have the waterfall every time, without ANY bridge around—to spoil the view!"

Everybody laughed—and it was as if a tension somewhere snapped. Then Mrs. Carew rose to her feet.

"Come, come, children, your stern chaperon says it's bedtime!" And with a merry chorus of good-nights the party broke up.

And so the days passed. To Pollyanna they were wonderful days, and still the most wonderful part was the charm of close companionship—a companionship that, while differing as to details with each one, was yet delightful with all.

With Sadie Dean she talked of the new Home, and of what a marvelous work Mrs. Carew was doing. They talked, too, of the old days when Sadie was selling bows behind the counter, and of what Mrs. Carew had done for her. Pollyanna heard, also, something of the old father and mother "back home," and of the joy that Sadie, in her new position, had been able to bring into their lives.

"And after all it's really YOU that began it, you know," she said one day to Pollyanna. But Pollyanna only shook her head at this with an emphatic:

"Nonsense! It was all Mrs. Carew."

With Mrs. Carew herself Pollyanna talked also of the Home, and of her plans for the girls. And once, in the hush of a twilight walk, Mrs. Carew spoke of herself and of her changed outlook on life. And she, like Sadie Dean, said brokenly: "After all, it's really you that began it, Pollyanna." But Pollyanna, as in Sadie Dean's case, would have none of this; and she began to talk of Jamie, and of what HE had done.

"Jamie's a dear," Mrs. Carew answered affectionately. "And I love him like an own son. He couldn't be dearer to me if he were really my sister's boy."

"Then you don't think he is?"

"I don't know. We've never learned anything conclusive. Sometimes I'm sure he is. Then again I doubt it. I think HE really believes he is—bless his heart! At all events, one thing is sure: he has good blood in him from somewhere. Jamie's no ordinary waif of the streets, you know, with his talents; and the wonderful way he has responded to teaching and training proves it."

"Of course," nodded Pollyanna. "And as long as you love him so well, it doesn't really matter, anyway, does it, whether he's the real Jamie or not?"

Mrs. Carew hesitated. Into her eyes crept the old somberness of heartache.

"Not so far as he is concerned," she sighed, at last. "It's only that sometimes I get to thinking: if he isn't our Jamie, where is—Jamie Kent? Is he well? Is he happy? Has he any one to love him? When I get to thinking like that, Pollyanna, I'm nearly wild. I'd give—everything I have in the world, it seems to me, to really KNOW that this boy is Jamie Kent."

Pollyanna used to think of this conversation sometimes, in her after talks with Jamie. Jamie was so sure of himself.

"It's just somehow that I FEEL it's so," he said once to Pollyanna. "I believe I am Jamie Kent. I've believed it quite a while. I'm afraid I've believed it so long now, that—that I just couldn't bear it, to find out I wasn't he. Mrs. Carew has done so much for me; just think if, after all, I were only a stranger!"

"But she—loves you, Jamie."

"I know she does—and that would only hurt all the more—don't you see?—because it would be hurting her. SHE wants me to be the real Jamie. I know she does. Now if I could only DO something for her—make her proud of me in some way! If I could only do something to support myself, even, like a man! But what can I do, with—these?" He spoke bitterly, and laid his hand on the crutches at his side.

Pollyanna was shocked and distressed. It was the first time she had heard Jamie speak of his infirmity since the old boyhood days. Frantically she cast about in her mind for just the right thing to say; but before she had even thought of anything, Jamie's face had undergone a complete change.

"But, there, forget it! I didn't mean to say it," he cried gaily. "And 'twas rank heresy to the game, wasn't it? I'm sure I'm GLAD I've got the crutches. They're a whole lot nicer than the wheel chair!"

"And the Jolly Book—do you keep it now?" asked Pollyanna, in a voice that trembled a little.

"Sure! I've got a whole library of jolly books now," he retorted. "They're all in leather, dark red, except the first one. That is the same little old notebook that Jerry gave me."

"Jerry! And I've been meaning all the time to ask for him," cried Pollyanna. "Where is he?"

"In Boston; and his vocabulary is just as picturesque as ever, only he has to tone it down at times. Jerry's still in the newspaper business—but he's GETTING the news, not selling it. Reporting, you know. I HAVE been able to help him and mumsey. And don't you suppose I was glad? Mumsey's in a sanatorium for her rheumatism."

"And is she better?"

"Very much. She's coming out pretty soon, and going to housekeeping with Jerry. Jerry's been making up some of his lost schooling during these past few years. He's let me help him—but only as a loan. He's been very particular to stipulate that."

"Of course," nodded Pollyanna, in approval. "He'd want it that way, I'm sure. I should. It isn't nice to be under obligations that you can't pay. I know how it is. That's why I so wish I could help Aunt Polly out—after all she's done for me!"

"But you are helping her this summer."

Pollyanna lifted her eyebrows.

"Yes, I'm keeping summer boarders. I look it, don't I?" she challenged, with a flourish of her hands toward her surroundings. "Surely, never was a boarding-house mistress's task quite like mine! And you should have heard Aunt Polly's dire predictions of what summer boarders would be," she chuckled irrepressibly.

"What was that?"

Pollyanna shook her head decidedly.

"Couldn't possibly tell you. That's a dead secret. But—" She stopped and sighed, her face growing wistful again. "This isn't going to last, you know. It can't. Summer boarders don't. I've got to do something winters. I've been thinking. I believe—I'll write stories."

Jamie turned with a start.

"You'll—what?" he demanded.

"Write stories—to sell, you know. You needn't look so surprised! Lots of folks do that. I knew two girls in Germany who did."

"Did you ever try it?" Jamie still spoke a little queerly.

"N-no; not yet," admitted Pollyanna. Then, defensively, in answer to the expression on his face, she bridled: "I TOLD you I was keeping summer boarders now. I can't do both at once."

"Of course not!"

She threw him a reproachful glance.

"You don't think I can ever do it?"

"I didn't say so."

"No; but you look it. I don't see why I can't. It isn't like singing. You don't have to have a voice for it. And it isn't like an instrument that you have to learn how to play."

"I think it is—a little—like that." Jamie's voice was low. His eyes were turned away.

"How? What do you mean? Why, Jamie, just a pencil and paper, so—that isn't like learning to play the piano or violin!"

There was a moment's silence. Then came the answer, still in that low, diffident voice; still with the eyes turned away.

"The instrument that you play on, Pollyanna, will be the great heart of the world; and to me that seems the most wonderful instrument of all—to learn. Under your touch, if you are skilful, it will respond with smiles or tears, as you will."



Pollyanna drew a tremulous sigh. Her eyes grew wet.

"Oh, Jamie, how beautifully you do put things—always! I never thought of it that way. But it's so, isn't it? How I would love to do it! Maybe I couldn't do—all that. But I've read stories in the magazines, lots of them. Seems as if I could write some like those, anyway. I LOVE to tell stories. I'm always repeating those you tell, and I always laugh and cry, too, just as I do when YOU tell them."

Jamie turned quickly.

"DO they make you laugh and cry, Pollyanna—really?" There was a curious eagerness in his voice.

"Of course they do, and you know it, Jamie. And they used to long ago, too, in the Public Garden. Nobody can tell stories like you, Jamie. YOU ought to be the one writing stories; not I. And, say, Jamie, why don't you? You could do it lovely, I know!"

There was no answer. Jamie, apparently, did not hear; perhaps because he called, at that instant, to a chipmunk that was scurrying through the bushes near by.

It was not always with Jamie, nor yet with Mrs. Carew and Sadie Dean that Pollyanna had delightful walks and talks, however; very often it was with Jimmy, or John Pendleton.

Pollyanna was sure now that she had never before known John Pendleton. The old taciturn moroseness seemed entirely gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both laughable and thrilling, that had befallen him in his foreign travels.

"In the 'Desert of Sarah,' Nancy used to call it," laughed Pollyanna one night, as she joined the rest in begging for a story.

Better than all this, however, in Pollyanna's opinion, were the times when John Pendleton, with her alone, talked of her mother as he used to know her and love her, in the days long gone. That he did so talk with her was a joy to Pollyanna, but a great surprise, too; for, never in the past, had John Pendleton talked so freely of the girl whom he had so loved—hopelessly. Perhaps John Pendleton himself felt some of the surprise, for once he said to Pollyanna, musingly:

"I wonder why I'm talking to you like this."

"Oh, but I love to have you," breathed Pollyanna.

"Yes, I know—but I wouldn't think I would do it. It must be, though, that it's because you are so like her, as I knew her. You are very like your mother, my dear."

"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 to him, 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!



CHAPTER XXIII

"TIED TO TWO STICKS"

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.



CHAPTER XXIV

JIMMY WAKES UP

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 when Jimmy 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."



CHAPTER XXV

THE GAME AND POLLYANNA

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!"



CHAPTER XXVI

JOHN PENDLETON

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, John Pendleton 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 restless after 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 to Pollyanna'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.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE DAY POLLYANNA DID NOT PLAY

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.



CHAPTER XXVIII

JIMMY AND JAMIE

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," cried Jimmy, 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 with Pollyanna'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."

"Oh-h!" breathed Mrs. Carew, leaning forward suddenly in her chair. "And is that why he's—never married?"

"Yes," avouched Jimmy. "So you see there's really nothing to that idea at all—that he cares for Pollyanna. It was her mother."

"On the contrary I think it makes a whole lot to that idea," declared Jamie, wagging his head wisely. "I think it makes my case all the stronger. Listen. He once loved the mother. He couldn't have her. What more absolutely natural than that he should love the daughter now—and win her?"