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

he died. We stopped ’most a week with a farmer. Dad helped about the hayin’⁠—and I did, too, some. The farmer’s wife was awful good to me, and pretty quick she was callin’ me ‘Jamie.’ I don’t know why, but she just did. And one day father heard her. He got awful mad⁠—so mad that I remembered it always⁠—what he said. He said ‘Jamie’ wasn’t no sort of a name for a boy, and that no son of his should ever be called it. He said ’twas a sissy name, and he hated it. ‘Seems so I never saw him so mad as he was that night. He wouldn’t even stay to finish the work, but him and me took to the road again that night. I was kind of sorry, ’cause I liked her⁠—the farmer’s wife, I mean. She was good to me.”

Pollyanna nodded, all sympathy and interest. It was not often that Jimmy said much of that mysterious past life of his, before she had known him.

“And what happened next?” she prompted. Pollyanna had, for the moment, forgotten all about the original subject of the controversy⁠—the name “Jamie” that was dubbed “sissy.”

The boy sighed.

“We just went on till we found another place. And ’twas there dad⁠—died. Then they put me in the ’sylum.”

“And then you ran away and I found you that day, down by Mrs. Snow’s,” exulted Pollyanna, softly. “And I’ve known you ever since.”

“Oh, yes⁠—and you’ve known me ever since,” repeated Jimmy⁠—but in a far different voice: Jimmy had suddenly come back to the present, and to his grievance. “But, then, I ain’t ‘Jamie,’ you know,” he finished with scornful emphasis, as he turned loftily away, leaving a distressed, bewildered Pollyanna behind him.

“Well, anyway, I can be glad he doesn’t always act like this,” sighed the little girl, as she mournfully watched the sturdy, boyish figure with its disagreeable, amazing swagger.

XV Aunt Polly Takes Alarm

Pollyanna had been at home about a week when the letter from Della Wetherby came to Mrs. Chilton.

“I wish I could make you see what your little niece has done for my sister,” wrote Miss Wetherby; “but I’m afraid I can’t. You would have to know what she was before. You did see her, to be sure, and perhaps you saw something of the hush and gloom in which she has shrouded herself for so many years. But you can have no conception of her bitterness of heart, her lack of aim and interest, her insistence upon eternal mourning.

“Then came Pollyanna. Probably I didn’t tell you, but my sister regretted her promise to take the child, almost the minute it was given; and she made the stern stipulation that the moment Pollyanna began to preach, back she should come to me. Well, she hasn’t preached⁠—at least, my sister says she hasn’t; and my sister ought to know. And yet⁠—well, just let me tell you what I found when I went to see her yesterday. Perhaps nothing else could give you a better idea of what that wonderful little Pollyanna of yours has accomplished.

“To begin with, as I approached the house, I saw that nearly all the shades were up: they used to be down⁠—‘way down to the sill. The minute I stepped into the hall I heard music⁠—Parsifal. The drawing-rooms were open, and the air was sweet with roses.

“ ‘Mrs. Carew and Master Jamie are in the music-room,’ said the maid. And there I found them⁠—my sister, and the youth she has taken into her home, listening to one of those modern contrivances that can hold an entire opera company, including the orchestra.

“The boy was in a wheel chair. He was pale, but plainly beatifically happy. My sister looked ten years younger. Her usually colorless cheeks showed a faint pink, and her eyes glowed and sparkled. A little later, after I had talked a few minutes with the boy, my sister and I went upstairs to her own rooms; and there she talked to me⁠—of Jamie. Not of the old Jamie, as she used to, with tear-wet eyes and hopeless sighs, but of the new Jamie⁠—and there were no sighs nor tears now. There was, instead, the eagerness of enthusiastic interest.

“ ‘Della, he’s wonderful,’ she began. ‘Everything that is best in music, art, and literature seems to appeal to him in a perfectly marvelous fashion, only, of course, he needs development and training. That’s what I’m going to see that he gets. A tutor is coming tomorrow. Of course his language is something awful; at the same time, he has read so many good books that his vocabulary is quite amazing⁠—and you should hear the stories he can reel off! Of course in general education he is very deficient; but he’s eager to learn, so that will soon be remedied. He loves music, and I shall give him what training in that he wishes. I have already put in a stock of carefully selected records. I wish you could have seen his face when he first heard that Holy Grail music. He knows all about King Arthur and his Round Table, and he prattles of knights and lords and ladies as you and I do of the members of our own family⁠—only sometimes I don’t know whether his Sir Lancelot means the ancient knight or a squirrel in the Public Garden. And, Della, I believe he can be made to walk. I’m going to have Dr. Ames see him, anyway, and⁠—’

“And so on and on she talked, while I sat amazed and tongue-tied, but, oh, so happy! I tell you all this, dear Mrs. Chilton, so you can see for yourself how interested she is, how eagerly she is going to watch this boy’s growth and development, and how, in spite of herself, it is all going to change her attitude toward life. She can’t do what she is doing for this boy, Jamie, and not do for herself at the same time. Never again, I believe, will she be the soured,