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

years. He’s let me help him⁠—but only as a loan. He’s been very particular to stipulate that.”

“Of course,” nodded Pollyanna, in approval. “He’d want it that way, I’m sure. I should. It isn’t nice to be under obligations that you can’t pay. I know how it is. That’s why I so wish I could help Aunt Polly out⁠—after all she’s done for me!”

“But you are helping her this summer.”

Pollyanna lifted her eyebrows.

“Yes, I’m keeping summer boarders. I look it, don’t I?” she challenged, with a flourish of her hands toward her surroundings. “Surely, never was a boardinghouse mistress’s task quite like mine! And you should have heard Aunt Polly’s dire predictions of what summer boarders would be,” she chuckled irrepressibly.

“What was that?”

Pollyanna shook her head decidedly.

“Couldn’t possibly tell you. That’s a dead secret. But⁠—” She stopped and sighed, her face growing wistful again. “This isn’t going to last, you know. It can’t. Summer boarders don’t. I’ve got to do something winters. I’ve been thinking. I believe⁠—I’ll write stories.”

Jamie turned with a start.

“You’ll⁠—what?” he demanded.

“Write stories⁠—to sell, you know. You needn’t look so surprised! Lots of folks do that. I knew two girls in Germany who did.”

“Did you ever try it?” Jamie still spoke a little queerly.

“N-no; not yet,” admitted Pollyanna. Then, defensively, in answer to the expression on his face, she bridled: “I told you I was keeping summer boarders now. I can’t do both at once.”

“Of course not!”

She threw him a reproachful glance.

“You don’t think I can ever do it?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“No; but you look it. I don’t see why I can’t. It isn’t like singing. You don’t have to have a voice for it. And it isn’t like an instrument that you have to learn how to play.”

“I think it is⁠—a little⁠—like that.” Jamie’s voice was low. His eyes were turned away.

“How? What do you mean? Why, Jamie, just a pencil and paper, so⁠—that isn’t like learning to play the piano or violin!”

There was a moment’s silence. Then came the answer, still in that low, diffident voice; still with the eyes turned away.

“The instrument that you play on, Pollyanna, will be the great heart of the world; and to me that seems the most wonderful instrument of all⁠—to learn. Under your touch, if you are skilful, it will respond with smiles or tears, as you will.”

Pollyanna drew a tremulous sigh. Her eyes grew wet.

“Oh, Jamie, how beautifully you do put things⁠—always! I never thought of it that way. But it’s so, isn’t it? How I would love to do it! Maybe I couldn’t do⁠—all that. But I’ve read stories in the magazines, lots of them. Seems as if I could write some like those, anyway. I love to tell stories. I’m always repeating those you tell, and I always laugh and cry, too, just as I do when you tell them.”

Jamie turned quickly.

“Do they make you laugh and cry, Pollyanna⁠—really?” There was a curious eagerness in his voice.

“Of course they do, and you know it, Jamie. And they used to long ago, too, in the Public Garden. Nobody can tell stories like you, Jamie. you ought to be the one writing stories; not I. And, say, Jamie, why don’t you? You could do it lovely, I know!”

There was no answer. Jamie, apparently, did not hear; perhaps because he called, at that instant, to a chipmunk that was scurrying through the bushes near by.

It was not always with Jamie, nor yet with Mrs. Carew and Sadie Dean that Pollyanna had delightful walks and talks, however; very often it was with Jimmy, or John Pendleton.

Pollyanna was sure now that she had never before known John Pendleton. The old taciturn moroseness seemed entirely gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both laughable and thrilling, that had befallen him in his foreign travels.

“In the ‘Desert of Sarah,’ Nancy used to call it,” laughed Pollyanna one night, as she joined the rest in begging for a story.

Better than all this, however, in Pollyanna’s opinion, were the times when John Pendleton, with her alone, talked of her mother as he used to know her and love her, in the days long gone. That he did so talk with her was a joy to Pollyanna, but a great surprise, too; for, never in the past, had John Pendleton talked so freely of the girl whom he had so loved⁠—hopelessly. Perhaps John Pendleton himself felt some of the surprise, for once he said to Pollyanna, musingly:

“I wonder why I’m talking to you like this.”

“Oh, but I love to have you,” breathed Pollyanna.

“Yes, I know⁠—but I wouldn’t think I would do it. It must be, though, that it’s because you are so like her, as I knew her. You are very like your mother, my dear.”

“Why, I thought my mother was beautiful!” cried Pollyanna, in unconcealed amazement.

John Pendleton smiled quizzically.

“She was, my dear.”

Pollyanna looked still more amazed.

“Then I don’t see how I can be like her!”

The man laughed outright.

“Pollyanna, if some girls had said that, I⁠—well, never mind what I’d say. You little witch!⁠—you poor, homely little Pollyanna!”

Pollyanna flashed a genuinely distressed reproof straight into the man’s merry eyes.

“Please, Mr. Pendleton, don’t look like that, and don’t tease me⁠—about that. I’d so love to be beautiful⁠—though of course it sounds silly to say it. And I have a mirror, you know.”

“Then I advise you to look in it⁠—when you’re talking sometime,” observed the man sententiously.

Pollyanna’s eyes flew wide open.

“Why, that’s just what Jimmy said,” she cried.

“Did he, indeed⁠—the young rascal!” retorted John Pendleton, dryly. Then, with one of the curiously abrupt changes of manner peculiar to him, he said, very low: “You have your mother’s eyes and smile, Pollyanna; and to me you are⁠—beautiful.”

And Pollyanna, her eyes blinded with sudden hot tears, was silenced.

Dear as were these talks, however, they still