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

when he wasn’t Jamie? Never, Pollyanna! I couldn’t.”

“But if you can’t help Jamie, I should think you’d be so glad there was someone like him you could help,” urged Pollyanna, tremulously. “What if your Jamie was like this Jamie, all poor and sick, wouldn’t you want someone to take him in and comfort him, and⁠—” “Don’t⁠—don’t, Pollyanna,” moaned Mrs. Carew, turning her head from side to side, in a frenzy of grief. “When I think that maybe, somewhere, our Jamie is like that⁠—” Only a choking sob finished the sentence.

“That’s just what I mean⁠—that’s just what I mean!” triumphed Pollyanna, excitedly. “Don’t you see? If this is your Jamie, of course you’ll want him; and if it isn’t, you couldn’t be doing any harm to the other Jamie by taking this one, and you’d do a whole lot of good, for you’d make this one so happy⁠—so happy! And then, by and by, if you should find the real Jamie, you wouldn’t have lost anything, but you’d have made two little boys happy instead of one; and⁠—” But again Mrs. Carew interrupted her.

“Don’t, Pollyanna, don’t! I want to think⁠—I want to think.”

Tearfully Pollyanna sat back in her seat. By a very visible effort she kept still for one whole minute. Then, as if the words fairly bubbled forth of themselves, there came this:

“Oh, but what an awful, awful place that was! I just wish the man that owned it had to live in it himself⁠—and then see what he’d have to be glad for!”

Mrs. Carew sat suddenly erect. Her face showed a curious change. Almost as if in appeal she flung out her hand toward Pollyanna.

“Don’t!” she cried. “Perhaps⁠—she didn’t know, Pollyanna. Perhaps she didn’t know. I’m sure she didn’t know⁠—she owned a place like that. But it will be fixed now⁠—it will be fixed.”

“She! Is it a woman that owns it, and do you know her? And do you know the agent, too?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Carew bit her lips. “I know her, and I know the agent.”

“Oh, I’m so glad,” sighed Pollyanna. “Then it’ll be all right now.”

“Well, it certainly will be⁠—better,” avowed Mrs. Carew with emphasis, as the car stopped before her own door.

Mrs. Carew spoke as if she knew what she was talking about. And perhaps, indeed, she did⁠—better than she cared to tell Pollyanna. Certainly, before she slept that night, a letter left her hands addressed to one Henry Dodge, summoning him to an immediate conference as to certain changes and repairs to be made at once in tenements she owned. There were, moreover, several scathing sentences concerning “rag-stuffed windows,” and “rickety stairways,” that caused this same Henry Dodge to scowl angrily, and to say a sharp word behind his teeth⁠—though at the same time he paled with something very like fear.

XI A Surprise for Mrs. Carew

The matter of repairs and improvements having been properly and efficiently attended to, Mrs. Carew told herself that she had done her duty, and that the matter was closed. She would forget it. The boy was not Jamie⁠—he could not be Jamie. That ignorant, sickly, crippled boy her dead sister’s son? Impossible! She would cast the whole thing from her thoughts.

It was just here, however, that Mrs. Carew found herself against an immovable, impassable barrier: the whole thing refused to be cast from her thoughts. Always before her eyes was the picture of that bare little room and the wistful-faced boy. Always in her ears was that heartbreaking “What if it were Jamie?” And always, too, there was Pollyanna; for even though Mrs. Carew might (as she did) silence the pleadings and questionings of the little girl’s tongue, there was no getting away from the prayers and reproaches of the little girl’s eyes.

Twice again in desperation Mrs. Carew went to see the boy, telling herself each time that only another visit was needed to convince her that the boy was not the one she sought. But, even though while there in the boy’s presence, she told herself that she was convinced, once away from it, the old, old questioning returned. At last, in still greater desperation, she wrote to her sister, and told her the whole story.

“I had not meant to tell you,” she wrote, after she had stated the bare facts of the case. “I thought it a pity to harrow you up, or to raise false hopes. I am so sure it is not he⁠—and yet, even as I write these words, I know I am not sure. That is why I want you to come⁠—why you must come. I must have you see him.

“I wonder⁠—oh, I wonder what you’ll say! Of course we haven’t seen our Jamie since he was four years old. He would be twelve now. This boy is twelve, I should judge. (He doesn’t know his age.) He has hair and eyes not unlike our Jamie’s. He is crippled, but that condition came upon him through a fall, six years ago, and was made worse through another one four years later. Anything like a complete description of his father’s appearance seems impossible to obtain; but what I have learned contains nothing conclusive either for or against his being poor Doris’s husband. He was called ‘the Professor,’ was very queer, and seemed to own nothing save a few books. This might, or might not signify. John Kent was certainly always queer, and a good deal of a Bohemian in his tastes. Whether he cared for books or not I don’t remember. Do you? And of course the title ‘Professor’ might easily have been assumed, if he wished, or it might have been merely given him by others. As for this boy⁠—I don’t know, I don’t know⁠—but I do hope you will!

“Your distracted sister,

“Ruth.”

Della came at once, and she went immediately to see the boy; but she did not “know.” Like her sister, she said she did not think it was their Jamie, but at the same time there was that chance⁠—it might be he, after all.