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

I’ll read to you about her. This letter is from her sister, Della⁠—Miss Wetherby, you know, at the Sanatorium.”

“All right. Go ahead!” directed Jimmy, with a somewhat too evident attempt at polite interest. And Pollyanna, still smiling mischievously, began to read.

“You ask me to tell you everything about everybody. That is a large commission, but I’ll do the best I can. To begin with, I think you’ll find my sister quite changed. The new interests that have come into her life during the last six years have done wonders for her. Just now she is a bit thin and tired from overwork, but a good rest will soon remedy that, and you’ll see how young and blooming and happy she looks. Please notice I said happy. That won’t mean so much to you as it does to me, of course, for you were too young to realize quite how unhappy she was when you first knew her that winter in Boston. Life was such a dreary, hopeless thing to her then; and now it is so full of interest and joy.

“First she has Jamie, and when you see them together you won’t need to be told what he is to her. To be sure, we are no nearer knowing whether he is the real Jamie, or not, but my sister loves him like an own son now, and has legally adopted him, as I presume you know.

“Then she has her girls. Do you remember Sadie Dean, the salesgirl? Well, from getting interested in her, and trying to help her to a happier living, my sister has broadened her efforts little by little, until she has scores of girls now who regard her as their own best and particular good angel. She has started a Home for Working Girls along new lines. Half a dozen wealthy and influential men and women are associated with her, of course, but she is head and shoulders of the whole thing, and never hesitates to give herself to each and every one of the girls. You can imagine what that means in nerve strain. Her chief support and right-hand man is her secretary, this same Sadie Dean. You’ll find her changed, too, yet she is the same old Sadie.

“As for Jamie⁠—poor Jamie! The great sorrow of his life is that he knows now he can never walk. For a time we all had hopes. He was here at the Sanatorium under Dr. Ames for a year, and he improved to such an extent that he can go now with crutches. But the poor boy will always be a cripple⁠—so far as his feet are concerned, but never as regards anything else. Someway, after you know Jamie, you seldom think of him as a cripple, his soul is so free. I can’t explain it, but you’ll know what I mean when you see him; and he has retained, to a marvelous degree, his old boyish enthusiasm and joy of living. There is just one thing⁠—and only one, I believe⁠—that would utterly quench that bright spirit and cast him into utter despair; and that is to find that he is not Jamie Kent, our nephew. So long has he brooded over this, and so ardently has he wished it, that he has come actually to believe that he is the real Jamie; but if he isn’t, I hope he will never find it out.”

“There, that’s all she says about them,” announced Pollyanna, folding up the closely-written sheets in her hands. “But isn’t that interesting?”

“Indeed it is!” There was a ring of genuineness in Jimmy’s voice now. Jimmy was thinking suddenly of what his own good legs meant to him. He even, for the moment, was willing that this poor crippled youth should have a part of Pollyanna’s thoughts and attentions, if he were not so presuming as to claim too much of them, of course! “By George! it is tough for the poor chap, and no mistake.”

“Tough! You don’t know anything about it, Jimmy Bean,” choked Pollyanna; “but I do. I couldn’t walk once. I know!”

“Yes, of course, of course,” frowned the youth, moving restively in his seat. Jimmy, looking into Pollyanna’s sympathetic face and brimming eyes was suddenly not so sure, after all, that he was willing to have this Jamie come to town⁠—if just to think of him made Pollyanna look like that!

XX The Paying Guests

The few intervening days before the expected arrival of “those dreadful people,” as Aunt Polly termed her niece’s paying guests, were busy ones indeed for Pollyanna⁠—but they were happy ones, too, as Pollyanna refused to be weary, or discouraged, or dismayed, no matter how puzzling were the daily problems she had to meet.

Summoning Nancy, and Nancy’s younger sister, Betty, to her aid, Pollyanna systematically went through the house, room by room, and arranged for the comfort and convenience of her expected boarders. Mrs. Chilton could do but little to assist. In the first place she was not well. In the second place her mental attitude toward the whole idea was not conducive to aid or comfort, for at her side stalked always the Harrington pride of name and race, and on her lips was the constant moan:

“Oh, Pollyanna, Pollyanna, to think of the Harrington homestead ever coming to this!”

“It isn’t, dearie,” Pollyanna at last soothed laughingly. “It’s the Carews that are coming to the Harrington homestead!”

But Mrs. Chilton was not to be so lightly diverted, and responded only with a scornful glance and a deeper sigh, so Pollyanna was forced to leave her to travel alone her road of determined gloom.

Upon the appointed day, Pollyanna with Timothy (who owned the Harrington horses now) went to the station to meet the afternoon train. Up to this hour there had been nothing but confidence and joyous anticipation in Pollyanna’s heart. But with the whistle of the engine there came to her a veritable panic of doubt, shyness, and dismay. She realized suddenly what she, Pollyanna, almost alone and