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

say you aren’t. Now I reckon I’ll have a party all right! There’s Tommy Dolan and his sister Jennie, and the two Macdonald children, and three girls whose names I don’t know that live under the Murphys, and a whole lot more, if we have room for ’em. And only think how glad they’ll be when I tell ’em! Why, Mrs. Carew, seems to me as if I never knew anything so perfectly lovely in all my life⁠—and it’s all your doings! Now mayn’t I begin right away to invite ’em⁠—so they’ll know what’s coming to ’em?”

And Mrs. Carew, who would not have believed such a thing possible, heard herself murmuring a faint “yes,” which, she knew, bound her to the giving of a Christmas-tree party on New Year’s Eve to a dozen children from Murphy’s Alley and a young salesgirl whose name she did not know.

Perhaps in Mrs. Carew’s memory was still lingering a young girl’s “Sometimes I wonder there don’t some of ’em think of helpin’ the girls before they go wrong.” Perhaps in her ears was still ringing Pollyanna’s story of that same girl who had found a crowd in a big city the loneliest place in the world, yet who had refused to go with the handsome man that had “noticed too much.” Perhaps in Mrs. Carew’s heart was the undefined hope that somewhere in it all lay the peace she had so longed for. Perhaps it was a little of all three combined with utter helplessness in the face of Pollyanna’s amazing twisting of her irritated sarcasm into the wide-sweeping hospitality of a willing hostess. Whatever it was, the thing was done; and at once Mrs. Carew found herself caught into a veritable whirl of plans and plottings, the center of which was always Pollyanna and the party.

To her sister, Mrs. Carew wrote distractedly of the whole affair, closing with:

“What I’m going to do I don’t know; but I suppose I shall have to keep right on doing as I am doing. There is no other way. Of course, if Pollyanna once begins to preach⁠—but she hasn’t yet; so I can’t, with a clear conscience, send her back to you.”

Della, reading this letter at the Sanatorium, laughed aloud at the conclusion.

“ ‘Hasn’t preached yet,’ indeed!” she chuckled to herself. “Bless her dear heart! And yet you, Ruth Carew, own up to giving two Christmas-tree parties within a week, and, as I happen to know, your home, which used to be shrouded in deathlike gloom, is aflame with scarlet and green from top to toe. But she hasn’t preached yet⁠—oh, no, she hasn’t preached yet!”

The party was a great success. Even Mrs. Carew admitted that. Jamie, in his wheel chair, Jerry with his startling, but expressive vocabulary, and the girl (whose name proved to be Sadie Dean), vied with each other in amusing the more diffident guests. Sadie Dean, much to the others’ surprise⁠—and perhaps to her own⁠—disclosed an intimate knowledge of the most fascinating games; and these games, with Jamie’s stories and Jerry’s good-natured banter, kept everyone in gales of laughter until supper and the generous distribution of presents from the laden tree sent the happy guests home with tired sighs of content.

If Jamie (who with Jerry was the last to leave) looked about him a bit wistfully, no one apparently noticed it. Yet Mrs. Carew, when she bade him good night, said low in his ear, half impatiently, half embarrassedly:

“Well, Jamie, have you changed your mind⁠—about coming?”

The boy hesitated. A faint color stole into his cheeks. He turned and looked into her eyes wistfully, searchingly. Then very slowly he shook his head.

“If it could always be⁠—like tonight, I⁠—could,” he sighed. “But it wouldn’t. There’d be tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and next year comin’; and I’d know before next week that I hadn’t oughter come.”

If Mrs. Carew had thought that the New Year’s Eve party was to end the matter of Pollyanna’s efforts in behalf of Sadie Dean, she was soon undeceived; for the very next morning Pollyanna began to talk of her.

“And I’m so glad I found her again,” she prattled contentedly. “Even if I haven’t been able to find the real Jamie for you, I’ve found somebody else for you to love⁠—and of course you’ll love to love her, ’cause it’s just another way of loving Jamie.”

Mrs. Carew drew in her breath and gave a little gasp of exasperation. This unfailing faith in her goodness of heart, and unhesitating belief in her desire to “help everybody” was most disconcerting, and sometimes most annoying. At the same time it was a most difficult thing to disclaim⁠—under the circumstances, especially with Pollyanna’s happy, confident eyes full on her face.

“But, Pollyanna,” she objected impotently, at last, feeling very much as if she were struggling against invisible silken cords, “I⁠—you⁠—this girl really isn’t Jamie, at all, you know.”

“I know she isn’t,” sympathized Pollyanna quickly. “And of course I’m just as sorry she isn’t Jamie as can be. But she’s somebody’s Jamie⁠—that is, I mean she hasn’t got anybody down here to love her and⁠—and notice, you know; and so whenever you remember Jamie I should think you couldn’t be glad enough there was somebody you could help, just as you’d want folks to help Jamie, wherever he is.”

Mrs. Carew shivered and gave a little moan.

“But I want my Jamie,” she grieved.

Pollyanna nodded with understanding eyes.

“I know⁠—the ‘child’s presence.’ Mr. Pendleton told me about it⁠—only you’ve got the ‘woman’s hand.’ ”

“ ‘Woman’s hand’?”

“Yes⁠—to make a home, you know. He said that it took a woman’s hand or a child’s presence to make a home. That was when he wanted me, and I found him Jimmy, and he adopted him instead.”

“Jimmy?” Mrs. Carew looked up with the startled something in her eyes that always came into them at the mention of any variant of that name.

“Yes; Jimmy Bean.”

“Oh⁠—Bean,” said Mrs. Carew, relaxing.

“Yes. He was from an Orphan’s Home, and he ran away. I found him. He said he wanted another kind of a home with a mother in it instead of a Matron.