Pollyanna

Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But today she was hurrying⁠—actually hurrying.

Nancy, washing dishes at the sink, looked up in surprise. Nancy had been working in Miss Polly’s kitchen only two months, but already she knew that her mistress did not usually hurry.

“Nancy!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nancy answered cheerfully, but she still continued wiping the pitcher in her hand.

“Nancy,”⁠—Miss Polly’s voice was very stern now⁠—“when I’m talking to you, I wish you to stop your work and listen to what I have to say.”

Nancy flushed miserably. She set the pitcher down at once, with the cloth still about it, thereby nearly tipping it over⁠—which did not add to her composure.

“Yes, ma’am; I will, ma’am,” she stammered, righting the pitcher, and turning hastily. “I was only keepin’ on with my work ’cause you specially told me this mornin’ ter hurry with my dishes, ye know.”

Her mistress frowned.

“That will do, Nancy. I did not ask for explanations. I asked for your attention.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nancy stifled a sigh. She was wondering if ever in any way she could please this woman.

“Why, it’s a game. Father told it to me, and it’s lovely,” rejoined Pollyanna. “We’ve played it always, ever since I was a little, little girl. I told the Ladies’ Aid, and they played it⁠—some of them.”

“What is it? I ain’t much on games, though.”

Pollyanna laughed again, but she sighed, too; and in the gathering twilight her face looked thin and wistful.

“Why, we began it on some crutches that came in a missionary barrel.”

“Crutches!”

“Yes. You see I’d wanted a doll, and father had written them so; but when the barrel came the lady wrote that there hadn’t any dolls come in, but the little crutches had. So she sent ’em along as they might come in handy for some child, sometime. And that’s when we began it.”

“Well, I must say I can’t see any game about that, about that,” declared Nancy, almost irritably.

“Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about⁠—no matter what ’twas,” rejoined Pollyanna, earnestly. “And we began right then⁠—on the crutches.”

“Well, goodness me! I can’t see anythin’ ter be glad about⁠—gettin’ a pair of crutches when you wanted a doll!”

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

“There is⁠—there is,” she crowed. “But I couldn’t see it, either, Nancy, at first,” she added, with quick honesty. “Father had to tell it to me.”

“Well, then, suppose you tell me,” almost snapped Nancy.

“Goosey! Why, just be glad because you don’t⁠—need⁠—’em!” exulted Pollyanna, triumphantly. “You see it’s just as easy⁠—when you know how!”

“Well, of all the queer doin’s!” breathed Nancy, regarding Pollyanna with almost fearful eyes.

In the sickroom, after the girl had ushered her in and closed the door, Pollyanna blinked a little before she could accustom her eyes to the gloom. Then she saw, dimly outlined, a woman half-sitting up in the bed across the room. Pollyanna advanced at once.

“How do you do, Mrs. Snow? Aunt Polly says she hopes you are comfortable today, and she’s sent you some calf’s-foot jelly.”

“Dear me! Jelly?” murmured a fretful voice. “Of course I’m very much obliged, but I was hoping ’twould be lamb broth today.”

Pollyanna frowned a little.

“Why, I thought it was chicken you wanted when folks brought you jelly,” she said.

“What?” The sick woman turned sharply.

“Why, nothing, much,” apologized Pollyanna, hurriedly; “and of course it doesn’t really make any difference. It’s only that Nancy said it was chicken you wanted when we brought jelly, and lamb broth when we brought chicken⁠—but maybe ’twas the other way, and Nancy forgot.”

The sick woman pulled herself up till she sat erect in the bed⁠—a most unusual thing for her to do, though Pollyanna did not know this.

“Well, Miss Impertinence, who are you?” she demanded.

It was toward the end of August that Pollyanna, making an early morning call on John Pendleton, found the flaming band of blue and gold and green edged with red and violet lying across his pillow. She stopped short in awed delight.

“Why, Mr. Pendleton, it’s a baby rainbow⁠—a real rainbow come in to pay you a visit!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together softly. “Oh⁠—oh⁠—oh, how pretty it is! But how did it get in?” she cried.

The man laughed a little grimly: John Pendleton was particularly out of sorts with the world this morning.

“Well, I suppose it ‘got in’ through the bevelled edge of that glass thermometer in the window,” he said wearily. “The sun shouldn’t strike it at all but it does in the morning.”

“Oh, but it’s so pretty, Mr. Pendleton! And does just the sun do that? My! if it was mine I’d have it hang in the sun all day long!”

“Lots of good you’d get out of the thermometer, then,” laughed the man. “How do you suppose you could tell how hot it was, or how cold it was, if the thermometer hung in the sun all day?”

“I shouldn’t care,” breathed Pollyanna, her fascinated eyes on the brilliant band of colors across the pillow. “Just as if anybody’d care when they were living all the time in a rainbow!”

It was on the last day of October that the accident occurred. Pollyanna, hurrying home from school, crossed the road at an apparently safe distance in front of a swiftly approaching motor car.

Just what happened, no one could seem to tell afterward. Neither was there any one found who could tell why it happened or who was to blame that it did happen. Pollyanna, however, at five o’clock, was borne, limp and unconscious, into the little room that was so dear to her. There, by a white-faced Aunt Polly and a weeping Nancy she was undressed tenderly and put to bed, while from the village, hastily summoned by telephone, Dr. Warren was hurrying as fast as another motor car could bring him.

“And ye didn’t need ter more’n look at her aunt’s face,” Nancy was sobbing to Old Tom in the garden, after the doctor had arrived and was closeted in the hushed room; “ye didn’t need ter more’n look at her aunt’s face ter see that ’twa’n’t no duty that was eatin’ her. Yer hands don’t shake, and yer eyes don’t look as if ye was tryin’ ter hold back the Angel o’ Death himself, when you’re jest doin’ yer duty, Mr. Tom they don’t, they don’t!”

“Is she hurt⁠—bad?” The old man’s voice shook.

“There ain’t no tellin’,” sobbed Nancy.