Pollyanna, Eleanor Hodgman Porter [bill gates best books TXT] 📗

can’t do a great many things; but most of the Ladies’ Aiders, except Mrs. Rawson, said I had real good sense. I heard ‘em say so one day—they didn’t know I heard, though.”

The man smiled grimly.

“There, there, child, I beg your pardon, I’m sure; it’s only this confounded leg of mine. Now listen.” He paused, and with some difficulty reached his hand into his trousers pocket and brought out a bunch of keys, singling out one between his thumb and forefinger. “Straight through the path there, about five minutes’ walk, is my house. This key will admit you to the side door under the porte-cochere. Do you know what a porte-cochere is?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Auntie has one with a sun parlor over it. That’s the roof I slept on—only I didn’t sleep, you know. They found me.”

“Eh? Oh! Well, when you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you’ll find a telephone. Do you know how to use a telephone?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Why, once when Aunt Polly—

“Never mind Aunt Polly now,” cut in the man scowlingly, as he tried to move himself a little.

“Hunt up Dr. Thomas Chilton’s number on the card you’ll find somewhere around there—it ought to be on the hook down at the side, but it probably won’t be. You know a telephone card, I suppose, when you see one!”

“Oh, yes, sir! I just love Aunt Polly’s. There’s such a lot of queer names, and—”

“Tell Dr. Chilton that John Pendleton is at the foot of Little Eagle Ledge in Pendleton Woods with a broken leg, and to come at once with a stretcher and two men. He’ll know what to do besides that. Tell him to come by the path from the house.”

“A broken leg? Oh, Mr. Pendleton, how perfectly awful!” shuddered Pollyanna. “But I’m so glad I came! Can’t I do—”

“Yes, you can—but evidently you won’t! WILL you go and do what I ask and stop talking,” moaned the man, faintly. And, with a little sobbing cry, Pollyanna went.

Pollyanna did not stop now to look up at the patches of blue between the sunlit tops of the trees. She kept her eyes on the ground to make sure that no twig nor stone tripped her hurrying feet.

It was not long before she came in sight of the house. She had seen it before, though never so near as this. She was almost frightened now at the massiveness of the great pile of gray stone with its pillared verandas and its imposing entrance. Pausing only a moment, however, she sped across the big neglected lawn and around the house to the side door under the porte-cochere. Her fingers, stiff from their tight clutch upon the keys, were anything but skilful in their efforts to turn the bolt in the lock; but at last the heavy, carved door swung slowly back on its hinges.

Pollyanna caught her breath. In spite of her feeling of haste, she paused a moment and looked fearfully through the vestibule to the wide, sombre hall beyond, her thoughts in a whirl. This was John Pendleton’s house; the house of mystery; the house into which no one but its master entered; the house which sheltered, somewhere—a skeleton. Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter alone these fearsome rooms, and telephone the, doctor that the master of the house lay now—

With a little cry Pollyanna, looking neither to the right nor the left, fairly ran through the hall to the door at the end and opened it.

The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and hangings like the hall; but through the west window the sun threw a long shaft of gold across the floor, gleamed dully on the tarnished brass andirons in the fireplace, and touched the nickel of the telephone on the great desk in the middle of the room. It was toward this desk that Pollyanna hurriedly tiptoed.

The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the floor. But Pollyanna found it, and ran her shaking forefinger down through the C’s to “Chilton.” In due time she had Dr. Chilton himself at the other end of the wires, and was tremblingly delivering her message and answering the doctor’s terse, pertinent questions. This done, she hung up the receiver and drew a long breath of relief.

Only a brief glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved door, still half open as she had left it.

In what seemed, even to the injured man, an incredibly short time, Pollyanna was back in the woods at the man’s side.

“Well, what is the trouble? Couldn’t you get in?” he demanded.

Pollyanna opened wide her eyes.

“Why, of course I could! I’m HERE,” she answered. “As if I’d be here if I hadn’t got in! And the doctor will be right up just as soon as possible with the men and things. He said he knew just where you were, so I didn’t stay to show him. I wanted to be with you.”

“Did you?” smiled the man, grimly. “Well, I can’t say I admire your taste. I should think you might find pleasanter companions.”

“Do you mean—because you’re so—cross?

“Thanks for your frankness. Yes.”

Pollyanna laughed softly.

“But you’re only cross OUTSIDE—You arn’t cross inside a bit!”

“Indeed! How do you know that?” asked the man, trying to change the position of his head without moving the rest of his body.

“Oh, lots of ways; there—like that—the way you act with the dog,” she added, pointing to the long, slender hand that rested on the dog’s sleek head near him. “It’s funny how dogs and cats know the insides of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it? Say, I’m going to hold your head,” she finished abruptly.

The man winced several times and groaned once; softly while the change was being made; but in the end he found Pollyanna’s lap a very welcome substitute for the rocky hollow in which his head had lain before.

“Well, that is—better,” he murmured faintly.

He did not speak again for some time. Pollyanna, watching his face, wondered if he were asleep. She did not think he was. He looked as if his lips were tight shut to keep back moans of pain. Pollyanna herself almost cried aloud as she looked at his great, strong body lying there so helpless. One hand, with fingers tightly clenched, lay outflung, motionless. The other, limply open, lay on the dog’s head. The dog, his wistful, eager eyes on his master’s face, was motionless, too.

Minute by minute the time passed. The sun dropped lower in the west and the shadows grew deeper under the trees. Pollyanna sat so still she hardly seemed to breathe. A bird alighted fearlessly within reach of her hand, and a squirrel whisked his bushy tail on a tree-branch almost under her nose—yet with his bright little eyes all the while on the motionless dog.

At last the dog pricked up his cars and whined softly; then he gave a short, sharp bark. The next moment Pollyanna heard voices, and very soon their owners appeared three men carrying a stretcher and various other articles.

The tallest of the party—a smooth-shaven, kind-eyed man whom Pollyanna knew by sight as “Dr. Chilton”—advanced cheerily.

“Well, my little lady, playing nurse?”

“Oh, no, sir,” smiled Pollyanna. “I’ve only held his head—I haven’t given him a mite of medicine. But I’m glad I was here.”

“So am I,” nodded the doctor, as he turned his absorbed attention to the injured man.

CHAPTER XIV. JUST A MATTER OF JELLY

Pollyanna was a little late for supper on the night of the accident to John Pendleton; but, as it happened, she escaped without reproof.

Nancy met her at the door.

“Well, if I ain’t glad ter be settin’ my two eyes on you,” she sighed in obvious relief. “It’s half-past six!”

“I know it,” admitted Pollyanna anxiously; “but I’m not to blame—truly I’m not. And I don’t think even Aunt Polly will say I am, either.”

“She won’t have the chance,” retorted Nancy, with huge satisfaction. “She’s gone.”

“Gone!” gasped Pollyanna. “You don’t mean that I’ve driven her away?” Through Pollyanna’s mind at the moment trooped remorseful memories of the morning with its unwanted boy, cat, and dog, and its unwelcome “glad” and forbidden “father that would spring to her forgetful little tongue. Oh, I DIDN’T drive her away?”

“Not much you did,” scoff ed Nancy. “Her cousin died suddenly down to Boston, and she had ter go. She had one o’ them yeller telegram letters after you went away this afternoon, and she won’t be back for three days. Now I guess we’re glad all right. We’ll be keepin’ house tergether, jest you and me, all that time. We will, we will!”

Pollyanna looked shocked.

“Glad! Oh, Nancy, when it’s a funeral?”

“Oh, but ‘twa’n’t the funeral I was glad for, Miss Pollyanna. It was—” Nancy stopped abruptly. A shrewd twinkle came into her eyes. “Why, Miss Pollyanna, as if it wa’n’t yerself that was teachin’ me ter play the game,” she reproached her gravely.

Pollyanna puckered her forehead into a troubled frown.

“I can’t help it, Nancy,” she argued with a shake of her head. “It must be that there are some things that ‘tisn’t right to play the game on—and I’m sure funerals is one of them. There’s nothing in a funeral to be glad about.”

Nancy chuckled.

“We can be glad ‘tain’t our’n,” she observed demurely. But Pollyanna did not hear. She had begun to tell of the accident; and in a moment Nancy, open-mouthed, was listening.

At the appointed place the next afternoon, Pollyanna met Jimmy Bean according to agreement. As was to be expected, of course, Jimmy showed keen disappointment that the Ladies’ Aid preferred a little India boy to himself.

“Well, maybe ‘tis natural,” he sighed. “Of course things you don’t know about are always nicer’n things you do, same as the pertater on ‘tother side of the plate is always the biggest. But I wish I looked that way ter somebody ‘way off. Wouldn’t it be jest great, now, if only somebody over in India wanted ME?”

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

“Why, of course! That’s the very thing, Jimmy! I’ll write to my Ladies’ Aiders about you. They aren’t over in India; they’re only out West—but that’s awful far away, just the same. I reckon you’d think so if you’d come all the way here as I did!”

Jimmy’s face brightened.

“Do you think they would—truly—take me?” he asked.

“Of course they would! Don’t they take little boys in India to bring up? Well, they can just play you are the little India boy this time. I reckon you’re far enough away to make a report, all right. You wait. I’ll write ‘em. I’ll write Mrs. White. No, I’ll write Mrs. Jones. Mrs. White has got the most money, but Mrs. Jones gives the most—which is kind of funny, isn’t it?—when you think of it. But I reckon some of the Aiders will take you.”

“All right—but don’t furgit ter say I’ll work fur my board an’ keep,” put in Jimmy. “I ain’t no beggar, an’ biz’ness is biz’ness, even with Ladies’ Aiders, I’m thinkin’.” He hesitated, then added: “An’ I s’pose I better stay where I be fur a spell yet—till you hear.”