Pollyanna Grows Up, Eleanor H. Porter [best short novels of all time txt] 📗

a walk in the Public Garden. Just how this was to be brought about Pollyanna did not know; but brought about it must be.

To tell Mrs. Carew plainly that she had found Jamie, and wanted her to go to see him, was out of the question. There was, of course, a bare chance that this might not be her Jamie; and if it were not, and if she had thus raised in Mrs. Carew false hopes, the result might be disastrous. Pollyanna knew, from what Mary had told her, that twice already Mrs. Carew had been made very ill by the great disappointment of following alluring clues that had led to some boy very different from her dead sister’s son. So Pollyanna knew that she could not tell Mrs. Carew why she wanted her to go to walk tomorrow in the Public Garden. But there would be a way, declared Pollyanna to herself as she happily hurried homeward.

Fate, however, as it happened, once more intervened in the shape of a heavy rainstorm; and Pollyanna did not have to more than look out of doors the next morning to realize that there would be no Public Garden stroll that day. Worse yet, neither the next day nor the next saw the clouds dispelled; and Pollyanna spent all three afternoons wandering from window to window, peering up into the sky, and anxiously demanding of everyone: “Don’t you think it looks a little like clearing up?”

So unusual was this behavior on the part of the cheery little girl, and so irritating was the constant questioning, that at last Mrs. Carew lost her patience.

“For pity’s sake, child, what is the trouble?” she cried. “I never knew you to fret so about the weather. Where’s that wonderful glad game of yours today?”

Pollyanna reddened and looked abashed.

“Dear me, I reckon maybe I did forget the game this time,” she admitted. “And of course there is something about it I can be glad for, if I’ll only hunt for it. I can be glad that⁠—that it will have to stop raining sometime ’cause God said he wouldn’t send another flood. But you see, I did so want it to be pleasant today.”

“Why, especially?”

“Oh, I⁠—I just wanted to go to walk in the Public Garden.” Pollyanna was trying hard to speak unconcernedly. “I⁠—I thought maybe you’d like to go with me, too.” Outwardly Pollyanna was nonchalance itself. Inwardly, however, she was aquiver with excitement and suspense.

“I go to walk in the Public Garden?” queried Mrs. Carew, with brows slightly uplifted. “Thank you, no, I’m afraid not,” she smiled.

“Oh, but you⁠—you wouldn’t refuse!” faltered Pollyanna, in quick panic.

“I have refused.”

Pollyanna swallowed convulsively. She had grown really pale.

“But, Mrs. Carew, please, please don’t say you won’t go, when it gets pleasant,” she begged. “You see, for a⁠—a special reason I wanted you to go⁠—with me⁠—just this once.”

Mrs. Carew frowned. She opened her lips to make the “no” more decisive; but something in Pollyanna’s pleading eyes must have changed the words, for when they came they were a reluctant acquiescence.

“Well, well, child, have your own way. But if I promise to go, you must promise not to go near the window for an hour, and not to ask again today if I think it’s going to clear up.”

“Yes’m, I will⁠—I mean, I won’t,” palpitated Pollyanna. Then, as a pale shaft of light that was almost a sunbeam, came aslant through the window, she cried joyously: “But you do think it is going to⁠—Oh!” she broke off in dismay, and ran from the room.

Unmistakably it “cleared up” the next morning. But, though the sun shone brightly, there was a sharp chill in the air, and by afternoon, when Pollyanna came home from school, there was a brisk wind. In spite of protests, however, she insisted that it was a beautiful day out, and that she should be perfectly miserable if Mrs. Carew would not come for a walk in the Public Garden. And Mrs. Carew went, though still protesting.

As might have been expected, it was a fruitless journey. Together the impatient woman and the anxious-eyed little girl hurried shiveringly up one path and down another. (Pollyanna, not finding the boy in his accustomed place, was making frantic search in every nook and corner of the Garden. To Pollyanna it seemed that she could not have it so. Here she was in the Garden, and here with her was Mrs. Carew; but not anywhere to be found was Jamie⁠—and yet not one word could she say to Mrs. Carew.) At last, thoroughly chilled and exasperated, Mrs. Carew insisted on going home; and despairingly Pollyanna went.

Sorry days came to Pollyanna then. What to her was perilously near a second deluge⁠—but according to Mrs. Carew was merely “the usual fall rains”⁠—brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady downpour. If perchance occasionally there came a day of sunshine, Pollyanna always flew to the Garden; but in vain. Jamie was never there. It was the middle of November now, and even the Garden itself was full of dreariness. The trees were bare, the benches almost empty, and not one boat was on the little pond. True, the squirrels and pigeons were there, and the sparrows were as pert as ever, but to feed them was almost more of a sorrow than a joy, for every saucy switch of Sir Lancelot’s feathery tail but brought bitter memories of the lad who had given him his name⁠—and who was not there.

“And to think I didn’t find out where he lived!” mourned Pollyanna to herself over and over again, as the days passed. “And he was Jamie⁠—I just know he was Jamie. And now I’ll have to wait and wait till spring comes, and it’s warm enough for him to come here again. And then, maybe, I shan’t be coming here by that time. O dear, O dear⁠—and he was Jamie, I know he was Jamie!”

Then, one dreary afternoon, the unexpected happened. Pollyanna, passing through the upper hallway heard