Read Ebook: Pollyanna Grows Up by Porter Eleanor H Eleanor Hodgman

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Ebook has 2066 lines and 74316 words, and 42 pages

"Why, how extraordinary!" murmured Mrs. Carew, still not entirely comprehending.

"You'd think so--if you could see the results of that game in the Sanatorium," nodded Della; "and Dr. Ames says he hears she's revolutionized the whole town where she came from, just the same way. He knows Dr. Chilton very well--the man that married Pollyanna's aunt. And, by the way, I believe that marriage was one of her ministrations. She patched up an old lovers' quarrel between them.

"You see, two years ago, or more, Pollyanna's father died, and the little girl was sent East to this aunt. In October she was hurt by an automobile, and was told she could never walk again. In April Dr. Chilton sent her to the Sanatorium, and she was there till last March--almost a year. She went home practically cured. You should have seen the child! There was just one cloud to mar her happiness: that she couldn't WALK all the way there. As near as I can gather, the whole town turned out to meet her with brass bands and banners.

"But you can't TELL about Pollyanna. One has to SEE her. And that's why I say I wish you could have a dose of Pollyanna. It would do you a world of good."

Mrs. Carew lifted her chin a little.

"Really, indeed, I must say I beg to differ with you," she returned coldly. "I don't care to be 'revolutionized,' and I have no lovers' quarrel to be patched up; and if there is ANYTHING that would be insufferable to me, it would be a little Miss Prim with a long face preaching to me how much I had to be thankful for. I never could bear--" But a ringing laugh interrupted her.

"Oh, Ruth, Ruth," choked her sister, gleefully. "Miss Prim, indeed--POLLYANNA! Oh, oh, if only you could see that child now! But there, I might have known. I SAID one couldn't TELL about Pollyanna. And of course you won't be apt to see her. But--Miss Prim, indeed!" And off she went into another gale of laughter. Almost at once, however, she sobered and gazed at her sister with the old troubled look in her eyes.

"Seriously, dear, can't anything be done?" she pleaded. "You ought not to waste your life like this. Won't you try to get out a little more, and--meet people?"

"Why should I, when I don't want to? I'm tired of--people. You know society always bored me."

"Then why not try some sort of work--charity?"

Mrs. Carew gave an impatient gesture.

"Della, dear, we've been all over this before. I do give money--lots of it, and that's enough. In fact, I'm not sure but it's too much. I don't believe in pauperizing people."

"But if you'd give a little of yourself, dear," ventured Della, gently. "If you could only get interested in something outside of your own life, it would help so much; and--"

"Now, Della, dear," interrupted the elder sister, restively, "I love you, and I love to have you come here; but I simply cannot endure being preached to. It's all very well for you to turn yourself into an angel of mercy and give cups of cold water, and bandage up broken heads, and all that. Perhaps YOU can forget Jamie that way; but I couldn't. It would only make me think of him all the more, wondering if HE had any one to give him water and bandage up his head. Besides, the whole thing would be very distasteful to me--mixing with all sorts and kinds of people like that."

"Did you ever try it?"

"Why, no, of course not!" Mrs. Carew's voice was scornfully indignant.

"Then how can you know--till you do try?" asked the young nurse, rising to her feet a little wearily. "But I must go, dear. I'm to meet the girls at the South Station. Our train goes at twelve-thirty. I'm sorry if I've made you cross with me," she finished, as she kissed her sister good-by.

"I'm not cross with you, Della," sighed Mrs. Carew; "but if you only would understand!"

One minute later Della Wetherby made her way through the silent, gloomy halls, and out to the street. Face, step, and manner were very different from what they had been when she tripped up the steps less than half an hour before. All the alertness, the springiness, the joy of living were gone. For half a block she listlessly dragged one foot after the other. Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and drew a long breath.

"One week in that house would kill me," she shuddered. "I don't believe even Pollyanna herself could so much as make a dent in the gloom! And the only thing she could be glad for there would be that she didn't have to stay."

That this avowed disbelief in Pollyanna's ability to bring about a change for the better in Mrs. Carew's home was not Della Wetherby's real opinion, however, was quickly proved; for no sooner had the nurse reached the Sanatorium than she learned something that sent her flying back over the fifty-mile journey to Boston the very next day.

So exactly as before did she find circumstances at her sister's home that it seemed almost as if Mrs. Carew had not moved since she left her.

"Ruth," she burst out eagerly, after answering her sister's surprised greeting, "I just HAD to come, and you must, this once, yield to me and let me have my way. Listen! You can have that little Pollyanna here, I think, if you will."

"But I won't," returned Mrs. Carew, with chilly promptness.

Della Wetherby did not seem to have heard. She plunged on excitedly.

"When I got back yesterday I found that Dr. Ames had had a letter from Dr. Chilton, the one who married Pollyanna's aunt, you know. Well, it seems in it he said he was going to Germany for the winter for a special course, and was going to take his wife with him, if he could persuade her that Pollyanna would be all right in some boarding school here meantime. But Mrs. Chilton didn't want to leave Pollyanna in just a school, and so he was afraid she wouldn't go. And now, Ruth, there's our chance. I want YOU to take Pollyanna this winter, and let her go to some school around here."

"What an absurd idea, Della! As if I wanted a child here to bother with!"

"She won't bother a bit. She must be nearly or quite thirteen by this time, and she's the most capable little thing you ever saw."

"I don't like 'capable' children," retorted Mrs. Carew perversely--but she laughed; and because she did laugh, her sister took sudden courage and redoubled her efforts.

Perhaps it was the suddenness of the appeal, or the novelty of it. Perhaps it was because the story of Pollyanna had somehow touched Ruth Carew's heart. Perhaps it was only her unwillingness to refuse her sister's impassioned plea. Whatever it was that finally turned the scale, when Della Wetherby took her hurried leave half an hour later, she carried with her Ruth Carew's promise to receive Pollyanna into her home.

"I'll remember--but I'm not worrying any," nodded the younger woman, in farewell. To herself she whispered, as she hurried away from the house: "Half my job is done. Now for the other half--to get Pollyanna to come. But she's just got to come. I'll write that letter so they can't help letting her come!"

SOME OLD FRIENDS

In Beldingsville that August day, Mrs. Chilton waited until Pollyanna had gone to bed before she spoke to her husband about the letter that had come in the morning mail. For that matter, she would have had to wait, anyway, for crowded office hours, and the doctor's two long drives over the hills had left no time for domestic conferences.

It was about half-past nine, indeed, when the doctor entered his wife's sitting-room. His tired face lighted at sight of her, but at once a perplexed questioning came to his eyes.

"Why, Polly, dear, what is it?" he asked concernedly.

His wife gave a rueful laugh.

"Well, it's a letter--though I didn't mean you should find out by just looking at me."

"Then you mustn't look so I can," he smiled. "But what is it?"

Mrs. Chilton hesitated, pursed her lips, then picked up a letter near her.

"I'll read it to you," she said. "It's from a Miss Della Wetherby at Dr. Ames' Sanatorium."

"All right. Fire away," directed the man, throwing himself at full length on to the couch near his wife's chair.

But his wife did not at once "fire away." She got up first and covered her husband's recumbent figure with a gray worsted afghan. Mrs. Chilton's wedding day was but a year behind her. She was forty-two now. It seemed sometimes as if into that one short year of wifehood she had tried to crowd all the loving service and "babying" that had been accumulating through twenty years of lovelessness and loneliness. Nor did the doctor--who had been forty-five on his wedding day, and who could remember nothing but loneliness and lovelessness--on his part object in the least to this concentrated "tending." He acted, indeed, as if he quite enjoyed it--though he was careful not to show it too ardently: he had discovered that Mrs. Polly had for so long been Miss Polly that she was inclined to retreat in a panic and dub her ministrations "silly," if they were received with too much notice and eagerness. So he contented himself now with a mere pat of her hand as she gave the afghan a final smooth, and settled herself to read the letter aloud.

"My dear Mrs. Chilton," Della Wetherby had written. "Just six times I have commenced a letter to you, and torn it up; so now I have decided not to 'commence' at all, but just to tell you what I want at once. I want Pollyanna. May I have her?

"I met you and your husband last March when you came on to take Pollyanna home, but I presume you don't remember me. I am asking Dr. Ames to write your husband, so that you may not fear to trust your dear little niece to us.

"I understand that you would go to Germany with your husband but for leaving Pollyanna; and so I am making so bold as to ask you to let us take her. Indeed, I am begging you to let us have her, dear Mrs. Chilton. And now let me tell you why.

"My sister, Mrs. Carew, is a lonely, broken-hearted, discontented, unhappy woman. She lives in a world of gloom, into which no sunshine penetrates. Now I believe that if anything on earth can bring the sunshine into her life, it is your niece, Pollyanna. Won't you let her try? I wish I could tell you what she has done for the Sanatorium here, but nobody could TELL. You would have to see it. I long ago discovered that you can't TELL about Pollyanna. The minute you try to, she sounds priggish and preachy, and--impossible. Yet you and I know she is anything but that. You just have to bring Pollyanna on to the scene and let her speak for herself. And so I want to take her to my sister--and let her speak for herself. She would attend school, of course, but meanwhile I truly believe she would be healing the wound in my sister's heart.

"I don't know how to end this letter. I believe it's harder than it was to begin it. I'm afraid I don't want to end it at all. I just want to keep talking and talking, for fear, if I stop, it'll give you a chance to say no. And so, if you ARE tempted to say that dreadful word, won't you please consider that--that I'm still talking, and telling you how much we want and need Pollyanna.

"Hopefully yours,

"DELLA WETHERBY."

"There!" ejaculated Mrs. Chilton, as she laid the letter down. "Did you ever read such a remarkable letter, or hear of a more preposterous, absurd request?"

"Well, I'm not so sure," smiled the doctor. "I don't think it's absurd to want Pollyanna."

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