A DOSE OF POLLYANNA
As the eighth of September approached--the day Pollyanna was to
arrive--Mrs. Ruth Carew became more and more nervously exasperated
with herself. She declared that she had regretted just ONCE her
promise to take the child--and that was ever since she had given it.
Before twenty-four hours had passed she had, indeed, written to her
sister demanding that she be released from the agreement; but Della
had answered that it was quite too late, as already both she and Dr.
Ames had written the Chiltons.
Soon after that had come Della's letter saying that Mrs. Chilton had
given her consent, and would in a few days come to Boston to make
arrangements as to school, and the like. So there was nothing to be
done, naturally, but to let matters take their course. Mrs. Carew
realized that, and submitted to the inevitable, but with poor grace.
True, she tried to be decently civil when Della and Mrs. Chilton made
their expected appearance; but she was very glad that limited time
made Mrs. Chilton's stay of very short duration, and full to the brim
of business.
It was well, indeed, perhaps, that Pollyanna's arrival was to be at a
date no later than the eighth; for time, instead of reconciling Mrs.
Carew to the prospective new member of her household, was filling her
with angry impatience at what she was pleased to call her "absurd
yielding to Della's crazy scheme."
Nor was Della herself in the least unaware of her sister's state of
mind. If outwardly she maintained a bold front, inwardly she was very
fearful as to results; but on Pollyanna she was pinning her faith, and
because she did pin her faith on Pollyanna, she determined on the bold
stroke of leaving the little girl to begin her fight entirely unaided
and alone. She contrived, therefore, that Mrs. Carew should meet them
at the station upon their arrival; then, as soon as greetings and
introductions were over, she hurriedly pleaded a previous engagement
and took herself off. Mrs. Carew, therefore, had scarcely time to look
at her new charge before she found herself alone with the child.
"Oh, but Della, Della, you mustn't--I can't--" she called agitatedly,
after the retreating figure of the nurse.
But Della, if she heard, did not heed; and, plainly annoyed and vexed,
Mrs. Carew turned back to the child at her side.
"What a shame! She didn't hear, did she?" Pollyanna was saying, her
eyes, also, wistfully following the nurse. "And I didn't WANT her to
go now a bit. But then, I've got you, haven't I? I can be glad for
that."
"Oh, yes, you've got me--and I've got you," returned the lady, not
very graciously. "Come, we go this way," she directed, with a motion
toward the right.
Obediently Pollyanna turned and trotted at Mrs. Carew's side, through
the huge station; but she looked up once or twice rather anxiously
into the lady's unsmiling face. At last she spoke hesitatingly.
"I expect maybe you thought--I'd be pretty," she hazarded, in a
troubled voice.
"P--pretty?" repeated Mrs. Carew.
"Yes--with curls, you know, and all that. And of course you did wonder
how I DID look, just as I did you. Only I KNEW you'd be pretty and
nice, on account of your sister. I had her to go by, and you didn't
have anybody. And of course I'm not pretty, on account of the
freckles, and it ISN'T nice when you've been expecting a PRETTY little
girl, to have one come like me; and--"
"Nonsense, child!" interrupted Mrs. Carew, a trifle sharply. "Come,
we'll see to your trunk now, then we'll go home. I had hoped that my
sister would come with us; but it seems she didn't see fit--even for
this one night."
Pollyanna smiled and nodded.
"I know; but she couldn't, probably. Somebody wanted her, I expect.
Somebody was always wanting her at the Sanatorium. It's a bother, of
course, when folks do want you all the time, isn't it?--'cause you
can't have yourself when you want yourself, lots of times. Still, you
can be kind of glad for that, for it IS nice to be wanted, isn't it?"
There was no reply--perhaps because for the first time in her life
Mrs. Carew was wondering if anywhere in the world there was any one
who really wanted her--not that she WISHED to be wanted, of course,
she told herself angrily, pulling herself up with a jerk, and frowning
down at the child by her side.
Pollyanna did not see the frown. Pollyanna's eyes were on the hurrying
throngs about them.
"My! what a lot of people," she was saying happily. "There's even more
of them than there was the other time I was here; but I haven't seen
anybody, yet, that I saw then, though I've looked for them everywhere.
Of course the lady and the little baby lived in Honolulu, so probably
THEY WOULDN'T be here; but there was a little girl, Susie Smith--she
lived right here in Boston. Maybe you know her though. Do you know
Susie Smith?"
"No, I don't know Susie Smith," replied Mrs. Carew, dryly.
"Don't you? She's awfully nice, and SHE'S pretty--black curls, you
know; the kind I'm going to have when I go to Heaven. But never mind;
maybe I can find her for you so you WILL know her. Oh, my! what a
perfectly lovely automobile! And are we going to ride in it?" broke
off Pollyanna, as they came to a pause before a handsome limousine,
the door of which a liveried chauffeur was holding open.
[Illustration: "'Oh, my! What a perfectly lovely automobile!'"]
The chauffeur tried to hide a smile--and failed. Mrs. Carew, however,
answered with the weariness of one to whom "rides" are never anything
but a means of locomotion from one tiresome place to another probably
quite as tiresome.
"Yes, we're going to ride in it." Then "Home, Perkins," she added to
the deferential chauffeur.
"Oh, my, is it yours?" asked Pollyanna, detecting the unmistakable air
of ownership in her hostess's manner. "How perfectly lovely! Then you
must be rich--awfully--I mean EXCEEDINGLY rich, more than the kind
that just has carpets in every room and ice cream Sundays, like the
Whites--one of my Ladies' Aiders, you know. (That is, SHE was a
Ladies' Aider.) I used to think THEY were rich, but I know now that
being really rich means you've got diamond rings and hired girls and
sealskin coats, and dresses made of silk and velvet for every day, and
an automobile. Have you got all those?"
"Why, y-yes, I suppose I have," admitted Mrs. Carew, with a faint
smile.
"Then you are rich, of course," nodded Pollyanna, wisely. "My Aunt
Polly has them, too, only her automobile is a horse. My! but don't I
just love to ride in these things," exulted Pollyanna, with a happy
little bounce. "You see I never did before, except the one that ran
over me. They put me IN that one after they'd got me out from under
it; but of course I didn't know about it, so I couldn't enjoy it.
Since then I haven't been in one at all. Aunt Polly doesn't like them.
Uncle Tom does, though, and he wants one. He says he's got to have
one, in his business. He's a doctor, you know, and all the other
doctors in town have got them now. I don't know how it will come out.
Aunt Polly is all stirred up over it. You see, she wants Uncle Tom to
have what he wants, only she wants him to want what she wants him to
want. See?"
Mrs. Carew laughed suddenly.
"Yes, my dear, I think I see," she answered demurely, though her eyes
still carried--for them--a most unusual twinkle.
"All right," sighed Pollyanna contentedly. "I thought you would;
still, it did sound sort of mixed when I said it. Oh, Aunt Polly says
she wouldn't mind having an automobile, so much, if she could have the
only one there was in the world, so there wouldn't be any one else to
run into her; but--My! what a lot of houses!" broke off Pollyanna,
looking about her with round eyes of wonder. "Don't they ever stop?
Still, there'd have to be a lot of them for all those folks to live
in, of course, that I saw at the station, besides all these here on
the streets. And of course where there ARE more folks, there are more
to know. I love folks. Don't you?"
"LOVE FOLKS!"
"Yes, just folks, I mean. Anybody--everybody."
"Well, no, Pollyanna, I can't say that I do," replied Mrs. Carew,
coldly, her brows contracted.
Mrs. Carew's eyes had lost their twinkle. They were turned rather
mistrustfully, indeed, on Pollyanna. To herself Mrs. Carew was saying:
"Now for preachment number one, I suppose, on my duty to mix with my
fellow-men, a la Sister Della!"
"Don't you? Oh, I do," sighed Pollyanna. "They're all so nice and so
different, you know. And down here there must be such a lot of them to
be nice and different. Oh, you don't know how glad I am so soon that I
came! I knew I would be, anyway, just as soon as I found out you were
YOU--that is, Miss Wetherby's sister, I mean. I love Miss Wetherby, so
I knew I should you, too; for of course you'd be alike--sisters,
so--even if you weren't twins like Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Peck--and they
weren't quite alike, anyway, on account of the wart. But I reckon you
don't know what I mean, so I'll tell you."
And thus it happened that Mrs. Carew, who had been steeling herself
for a preachment on social ethics, found herself, much to her surprise
and a little to her discomfiture, listening to the story of a wart on
the nose of one Mrs. Peck, Ladies' Aider.
By the time the story was finished the limousine had turned into
Commonwealth Avenue, and Pollyanna immediately began to exclaim at the
beauty of a street which had such a "lovely big long yard all the way
up and down through the middle of it," and which was all the nicer,
she said, "after all those little narrow streets."
"Only I should think every one would want to live on it," she
commented enthusiastically.
"Very likely; but that would hardly be possible," retorted Mrs. Carew,
with uplifted eyebrows.
Pollyanna, mistaking the expression on her face for one of
dissatisfaction that her own home was not on the beautiful Avenue,
hastened to make amends.
"Why, no, of course not," she agreed. "And I didn't mean that the
narrower streets weren't just as nice," she hurried on; "and even
better, maybe, because you could be glad you didn't have to go so far
when you wanted to run across the way to borrow eggs or soda, and--Oh,
but DO you live here?" she interrupted herself, as the car came to a
stop before the imposing Carew doorway. "Do you live here, Mrs.
Carew?"
"Why, yes, of course I live here," returned the lady, with just a
touch of irritation.
"Oh, how glad, GLAD you must be to live in such a perfectly lovely
place!" exulted the little girl, springing to the sidewalk and looking
eagerly about her. "Aren't you glad?"
Mrs. Carew did not reply. With unsmiling lips and frowning brow she
was stepping from the limousine.
For the second time in five minutes, Pollyanna hastened to make
amends.
"Of course I don't mean the kind of glad that's sinfully proud," she
explained, searching Mrs. Carew's face with anxious eyes. "Maybe you
thought I did, same as Aunt Polly used to, sometimes. I don't mean the
kind that's glad because you've got something somebody else can't
have; but the kind that just--just makes you want to shout and yell
and bang doors, you know, even if it isn't proper," she finished,
dancing up and down on her toes.
The chauffeur turned his back precipitately, and busied himself with
the car. Mrs. Carew, still with unsmiling lips and frowning brow led
the way up the broad stone steps.
"Come, Pollyanna," was all she said, crisply.
It was five days later that Della Wetherby received the letter from
her sister, and very eagerly she tore it open. It was the first that
had come since Pollyanna's arrival in Boston.
"My dear Sister," Mrs. Carew had written. "For pity's sake, Della, why
didn't you give me some sort of an idea what to expect from this child
you have insisted upon my taking? I'm nearly wild--and I simply can't
send her away. I've tried to three times, but every time, before I get
the words out of my mouth, she stops them by telling me what a
perfectly lovely time she is having, and how glad she is to be here,
and how good I am to let her live with me while her Aunt Polly has
gone to Germany. Now how, pray, in the face of that, can I turn around
and say 'Well, won't you please go home; I don't want you'? And the
absurd part of it is, I don't believe it has ever entered her head
that I don't WANT her here; and I can't seem to make it enter her
head, either.
"Of course if she begins to preach, and to tell me to count my
blessings, I SHALL send her away. You know I told you, to begin with,
that I wouldn't permit that. And I won't. Two or three times I have
thought she was going to (preach, I mean), but so far she has always
ended up with some ridiculous story about those Ladies' Aiders of
hers; so the sermon gets sidetracked--luckily for her, if she wants to
stay.
"But, really, Della, she is impossible. Listen. In the first place she
is wild with delight over the house. The very first day she got here
she begged me to open every room; and she was not satisfied until
every shade in the house was up, so that she might 'see all the
perfectly lovely things,' which, she declared, were even nicer than
Mr. John Pendleton's--whoever he may be, somebody in Beldingsville, I
believe. Anyhow, he isn't a Ladies' Aider. I've found out that much.
"Then, as if it wasn't enough to keep me running from room to room (as
if I were the guide on a 'personally conducted'), what did she do but
discover a white satin evening gown that I hadn't worn for years, and
beseech me to put it on. And I did put it on--why, I can't imagine,
only that I found myself utterly helpless in her hands.
"But that was only the beginning. She begged then to see everything
that I had, and she was so perfectly funny in her stories of the
missionary barrels, which she used to 'dress out of,' that I had to
laugh--though I almost cried, too, to think of the wretched things
that poor child had to wear. Of course gowns led to jewels, and she
made such a fuss over my two or three rings that I foolishly opened
the safe, just to see her eyes pop out. And, Della, I thought that
child would go crazy. She put on to me every ring, brooch, bracelet,
and necklace that I owned, and insisted on fastening both diamond
tiaras in my hair (when she found out what they were), until there I
sat, hung with pearls and diamonds and emeralds, and feeling like a
heathen goddess in a Hindu temple, especially when that preposterous
child began to dance round and round me, clapping her hands and
chanting, 'Oh, how perfectly lovely, how perfectly lovely! How I would
love to hang you on a string in the window--you'd make such a
beautiful prism!'
"I was just going to ask her what on earth she meant by that when down
she dropped in the middle of the floor and began to cry. And what do
you suppose she was crying for? Because she was so glad she'd got eyes
that could see! Now what do you think of that?
"Of course this isn't all. It's only the beginning. Pollyanna has been
here four days, and she's filled every one of them full. She already
numbers among her friends the ash-man, the policeman on the beat, and
the paper boy, to say nothing of every servant in my employ. They seem
actually bewitched with her, every one of them. But please do not
think _I_ am, for I'm not. I would send the child back to you at once
if I didn't feel obliged to fulfil my promise to keep her this winter.
As for her making me forget Jamie and my great sorrow--that is
impossible. She only makes me feel my loss all the more
keenly--because I have her instead of him. But, as I said, I shall
keep her--until she begins to preach. Then back she goes to you. But
she hasn't preached yet.
"Lovingly but distractedly yours,
"RUTH."
"'Hasn't preached yet,' indeed!" chuckled Della Wetherby to herself,
folding up the closely-written sheets of her sister's letter. "Oh,
Ruth, Ruth! and yet you admit that you've opened every room, raised
every shade, decked yourself in satin and jewels--and Pollyanna hasn't
been there a week yet. But she hasn't preached--oh, no, she hasn't
preached!"