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

huge station; but she looked up once or twice rather anxiously into the lady’s unsmiling face. At last she spoke hesitatingly.

“I expect maybe you thought⁠—I’d be pretty,” she hazarded, in a troubled voice.

“P⁠—pretty?” repeated Mrs. Carew.

“Yes⁠—with curls, you know, and all that. And of course you did wonder how I did look, just as I did you. Only I knew you’d be pretty and nice, on account of your sister. I had her to go by, and you didn’t have anybody. And of course I’m not pretty, on account of the freckles, and it isn’t nice when you’ve been expecting a pretty little girl, to have one come like me; and⁠—”

“Nonsense, child!” interrupted Mrs. Carew, a trifle sharply. “Come, we’ll see to your trunk now, then we’ll go home. I had hoped that my sister would come with us; but it seems she didn’t see fit⁠—even for this one night.”

Pollyanna smiled and nodded.

“I know; but she couldn’t, probably. Somebody wanted her, I expect. Somebody was always wanting her at the Sanatorium. It’s a bother, of course, when folks do want you all the time, isn’t it?⁠—‘cause you can’t have yourself when you want yourself, lots of times. Still, you can be kind of glad for that, for it is nice to be wanted, isn’t it?”

There was no reply⁠—perhaps because for the first time in her life Mrs. Carew was wondering if anywhere in the world there was anyone who really wanted her⁠—not that she wished to be wanted, of course, she told herself angrily, pulling herself up with a jerk, and frowning down at the child by her side.

Pollyanna did not see the frown. Pollyanna’s eyes were on the hurrying throngs about them.

“My! what a lot of people,” she was saying happily. “There’s even more of them than there was the other time I was here; but I haven’t seen anybody, yet, that I saw then, though I’ve looked for them everywhere. Of course the lady and the little baby lived in Honolulu, so probably they wouldn’t be here; but there was a little girl, Susie Smith⁠—she lived right here in Boston. Maybe you know her though. Do you know Susie Smith?”

“No, I don’t know Susie Smith,” replied Mrs. Carew, dryly.

“Don’t you? She’s awfully nice, and she’s pretty⁠—black curls, you know; the kind I’m going to have when I go to Heaven. But never mind; maybe I can find her for you so you will know her. Oh, my! what a perfectly lovely automobile! And are we going to ride in it?” broke off Pollyanna, as they came to a pause before a handsome limousine, the door of which a liveried chauffeur was holding open.

The chauffeur tried to hide a smile⁠—and failed. Mrs. Carew, however, answered with the weariness of one to whom “rides” are never anything but a means of locomotion from one tiresome place to another probably quite as tiresome.

“Yes, we’re going to ride in it.” Then “Home, Perkins,” she added to the deferential chauffeur.

“Oh, my, is it yours?” asked Pollyanna, detecting the unmistakable air of ownership in her hostess’s manner. “How perfectly lovely! Then you must be rich⁠—awfully⁠—I mean exceedingly rich, more than the kind that just has carpets in every room and ice cream Sundays, like the Whites⁠—one of my Ladies’ Aiders, you know. (That is, she was a Ladies’ Aider.) I used to think they were rich, but I know now that being really rich means you’ve got diamond rings and hired girls and sealskin coats, and dresses made of silk and velvet for every day, and an automobile. Have you got all those?”

“Why, y-yes, I suppose I have,” admitted Mrs. Carew, with a faint smile.

“Then you are rich, of course,” nodded Pollyanna, wisely. “My Aunt Polly has them, too, only her automobile is a horse. My! but don’t I just love to ride in these things,” exulted Pollyanna, with a happy little bounce. “You see I never did before, except the one that ran over me. They put me in that one after they’d got me out from under it; but of course I didn’t know about it, so I couldn’t enjoy it. Since then I haven’t been in one at all. Aunt Polly doesn’t like them. Uncle Tom does, though, and he wants one. He says he’s got to have one, in his business. He’s a doctor, you know, and all the other doctors in town have got them now. I don’t know how it will come out. Aunt Polly is all stirred up over it. You see, she wants Uncle Tom to have what he wants, only she wants him to want what she wants him to want. See?”

Mrs. Carew laughed suddenly.

“Yes, my dear, I think I see,” she answered demurely, though her eyes still carried⁠—for them⁠—a most unusual twinkle.

“All right,” sighed Pollyanna contentedly. “I thought you would; still, it did sound sort of mixed when I said it. Oh, Aunt Polly says she wouldn’t mind having an automobile, so much, if she could have the only one there was in the world, so there wouldn’t be anyone else to run into her; but⁠—My! what a lot of houses!” broke off Pollyanna, looking about her with round eyes of wonder. “Don’t they ever stop? Still, there’d have to be a lot of them for all those folks to live in, of course, that I saw at the station, besides all these here on the streets. And of course where there are more folks, there are more to know. I love folks. Don’t you?”

“Love folks!”

“Yes, just folks, I mean. Anybody⁠—everybody.”

“Well, no, Pollyanna, I can’t say that I do,” replied Mrs. Carew, coldly, her brows contracted.

Mrs. Carew’s eyes had lost their twinkle. They were turned rather mistrustfully, indeed, on Pollyanna. To herself Mrs. Carew was saying: “Now for preachment number one, I suppose, on my duty to mix with my fellow-men, à la Sister Della!”

“Don’t you? Oh, I do,” sighed Pollyanna. “They’re all so nice and so different, you know. And down here there must be such a lot of them to be nice