A MATTER OF ADJUSTMENT
The first few days at Beldingsville were not easy either for Mrs.
Chilton or for Pollyanna. They were days of adjustment; and days of
adjustment are seldom easy.
From travel and excitement it was not easy to put one's mind to the
consideration of the price of butter and the delinquencies of the
butcher. From having all one's time for one's own, it was not easy to
find always the next task clamoring to be done. Friends and neighbors
called, too, and although Pollyanna welcomed them with glad
cordiality, Mrs. Chilton, when possible, excused herself; and always
she said bitterly to Pollyanna:
"Curiosity, I suppose, to see how Polly Harrington likes being poor."
Of the doctor Mrs. Chilton seldom spoke, yet Pollyanna knew very well
that almost never was he absent from her thoughts; and that more than
half her taciturnity was but her usual cloak for a deeper emotion
which she did not care to show.
Jimmy Pendleton Pollyanna saw several times during that first month.
He came first with John Pendleton for a somewhat stiff and ceremonious
call--not that it was either stiff or ceremonious until after Aunt
Polly came into the room; then it was both. For some reason Aunt Polly
had not excused herself on this occasion. After that Jimmy had come by
himself, once with flowers, once with a book for Aunt Polly, twice
with no excuse at all. Pollyanna welcomed him with frank pleasure
always. Aunt Polly, after that first time, did not see him at all.
To the most of their friends and acquaintances Pollyanna said little
about the change in their circumstances. To Jimmy, however, she talked
freely, and always her constant cry was: "If only I could do something
to bring in some money!"
"I'm getting to be the most mercenary little creature you ever saw,"
she laughed dolefully. "I've got so I measure everything with a dollar
bill, and I actually think in quarters and dimes. You see, Aunt Polly
does feel so poor!"
"It's a shame!" stormed Jimmy.
"I know it. But, honestly, I think she feels a little poorer than she
needs to--she's brooded over it so. But I do wish I could help!"
Jimmy looked down at the wistful, eager face with its luminous eyes,
and his own eyes softened.
[Illustration: See Frontispiece: "Jimmy looked down at the wistful,
eager face"]
"What do you WANT to do--if you could do it?" he asked.
"Oh, I want to cook and keep house," smiled Pollyanna, with a pensive
sigh. "I just love to beat eggs and sugar, and hear the soda gurgle
its little tune in the cup of sour milk. I'm happy if I've got a day's
baking before me. But there isn't any money in that--except in
somebody else's kitchen, of course. And I--I don't exactly love it
well enough for that!"
"I should say not!" ejaculated the young fellow.
Once more he glanced down at the expressive face so near him. This
time a queer look came to the corners of his mouth. He pursed his
lips, then spoke, a slow red mounting to his forehead.
"Well, of course you might--marry. Have you thought of that--Miss
Pollyanna?"
Pollyanna gave a merry laugh. Voice and manner were unmistakably those
of a girl quite untouched by even the most far-reaching of Cupid's
darts.
"Oh, no, I shall never marry," she said blithely. "In the first place
I'm not pretty, you know; and in the second place, I'm going to live
with Aunt Polly and take care of her."
"Not pretty, eh?" smiled Pendleton, quizzically. "Did it
ever--er--occur to you that there might be a difference of opinion on
that, Pollyanna?"
Pollyanna shook her head.
"There couldn't be. I've got a mirror, you see," she objected, with a
merry glance.
It sounded like coquetry. In any other girl it would have been
coquetry, Pendleton decided. But, looking into the face before him
now, Pendleton knew that it was not coquetry. He knew, too, suddenly,
why Pollyanna had seemed so different from any girl he had ever known.
Something of her old literal way of looking at things still clung to
her.
"Why aren't you pretty?" he asked.
Even as he uttered the question, and sure as he was of his estimate of
Pollyanna's character, Pendleton quite held his breath at his
temerity. He could not help thinking of how quickly any other girl he
knew would have resented that implied acceptance of her claim to no
beauty. But Pollyanna's first words showed him that even this lurking
fear of his was quite groundless.
"Why, I just am not," she laughed, a little ruefully. "I wasn't made
that way. Maybe you don't remember, but long ago, when I was a little
girl, it always seemed to me that one of the nicest things Heaven was
going to give me when I got there was black curls."
"And is that your chief desire now?"
"N-no, maybe not," hesitated Pollyanna. "But I still think I'd like
them. Besides, my eyelashes aren't long enough, and my nose isn't
Grecian, or Roman, or any of those delightfully desirable ones that
belong to a 'type.' It's just NOSE. And my face is too long, or too
short, I've forgotten which; but I measured it once with one of those
'correct-for-beauty' tests, and it wasn't right, anyhow. And they said
the width of the face should be equal to five eyes, and the width of
the eyes equal to--to something else. I've forgotten that, too--only
that mine wasn't."
"What a lugubrious picture!" laughed Pendleton. Then, with his gaze
admiringly regarding the girl's animated face and expressive eyes, he
asked:
"Did you ever look in the mirror when you were talking, Pollyanna?"
"Why, no, of course not!"
"Well, you'd better try it sometime."
"What a funny idea! Imagine my doing it," laughed the girl. "What
shall I say? Like this? 'Now, you, Pollyanna, what if your eyelashes
aren't long, and your nose is just a nose, be glad you've got SOME
eyelashes and SOME nose!'"
Pendleton joined in her laugh, but an odd expression came to his face.
"Then you still play--the game," he said, a little diffidently.
Pollyanna turned soft eyes of wonder full upon him.
"Why, of course! Why, Jimmy, I don't believe I could have lived--the
last six months--if it hadn't been for that blessed game." Her voice
shook a little.
"I haven't heard you say much about it," he commented.
She changed color.
"I know. I think I'm afraid--of saying too much--to outsiders, who
don't care, you know. It wouldn't sound quite the same from me now, at
twenty, as it did when I was ten. I realize that, of course. Folks
don't like to be preached at, you know," she finished with a whimsical
smile.
"I know," nodded the young fellow gravely. "But I wonder sometimes,
Pollyanna, if you really understand yourself what that game is, and
what it has done for those who are playing it."
"I know--what it has done for myself." Her voice was low, and her eyes
were turned away.
"You see, it really WORKS, if you play it," he mused aloud, after a
short silence. "Somebody said once that it would revolutionize the
world if everybody would really play it. And I believe it would."
"Yes; but some folks don't want to be revolutionized," smiled
Pollyanna. "I ran across a man in Germany last year. He had lost his
money, and was in hard luck generally. Dear, dear, but he was gloomy!
Somebody in my presence tried to cheer him up one day by saying,
'Come, come, things might be worse, you know!' Dear, dear, but you
should have heard that man then!
"'If there is anything on earth that makes me mad clear through,' he
snarled, 'it is to be told that things might be worse, and to be
thankful for what I've got left. These people who go around with an
everlasting grin on their faces caroling forth that they are thankful
that they can breathe, or eat, or walk, or lie down, I have no use
for. I don't WANT to breathe, or eat, or walk, or lie down--if things
are as they are now with me. And when I'm told that I ought to be
thankful for some such tommyrot as that, it makes me just want to go
out and shoot somebody!'"
"Imagine what I'D have gotten if I'd have introduced the glad game to
that man!" laughed Pollyanna.
"I don't care. He needed it," answered Jimmy.
"Of course he did--but he wouldn't have thanked me for giving it to
him."
"I suppose not. But, listen! As he was, under his present philosophy
and scheme of living, he made himself and everybody else wretched,
didn't he? Well, just suppose he was playing the game. While he was
trying to hunt up something to be glad about in everything that had
happened to him, he COULDN'T be at the same time grumbling and
growling about how bad things were; so that much would be gained. He'd
be a whole lot easier to live with, both for himself and for his
friends. Meanwhile, just thinking of the doughnut instead of the hole
couldn't make things any worse for him, and it might make things
better; for it wouldn't give him such a gone feeling in the pit of his
stomach, and his digestion would be better. I tell you, troubles are
poor things to hug. They've got too many prickers."
Pollyanna smiled appreciatively.
"That makes me think of what I told a poor old lady once. She was one
of my Ladies' Aiders out West, and was one of the kind of people that
really ENJOYS being miserable and telling over her causes for
unhappiness. I was perhaps ten years old, and was trying to teach her
the game. I reckon I wasn't having very good success, and evidently I
at last dimly realized the reason, for I said to her triumphantly:
'Well, anyhow, you can be glad you've got such a lot of things to make
you miserable, for you love to be miserable so well!'"
"Well, if that wasn't a good one on her," chuckled Jimmy.
Pollyanna raised her eyebrows.
"I'm afraid she didn't enjoy it any more than the man in Germany would
have if I'd told him the same thing."
"But they ought to be told, and you ought to tell--" Pendleton stopped
short with so queer an expression on his face that Pollyanna looked at
him in surprise.
"Why, Jimmy, what is it?"
"Oh, nothing. I was only thinking," he answered, puckering his lips.
"Here I am urging you to do the very thing I was afraid you WOULD do
before I saw you, you know. That is, I was afraid before I saw you,
that--that--" He floundered into a helpless pause, looking very red
indeed.
"Well, Jimmy Pendleton," bridled the girl, "you needn't think you can
stop there, sir. Now just what do you mean by all that, please?"
"Oh, er--n-nothing, much."
"I'm waiting," murmured Pollyanna. Voice and manner were calm and
confident, though the eyes twinkled mischievously.
The young fellow hesitated, glanced at her smiling face, and
capitulated.
"Oh, well, have it your own way," he shrugged. "It's only that I was
worrying--a little--about that game, for fear you WOULD talk it just
as you used to, you know, and--" But a merry peal of laughter
interrupted him.
"There, what did I tell you? Even you were worried, it seems, lest I
should be at twenty just what I was at ten!"
"N-no, I didn't mean--Pollyanna, honestly, I thought--of course I
knew--" But Pollyanna only put her hands to her ears and went off into
another peal of laughter.