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Page 37
"No--nor anybody else," retorted Miss Polly, with meaning
emphasis.
"Oh, yes, they do," nodded Pollyanna, entirely misunderstanding
her aunt's words. "I told everybody we should keep it, if I
didn't find where it belonged. I knew you'd be glad to have
it--poor little lonesome thing!"
Miss Polly opened her lips and tried to speak; but in vain. The
curious helpless feeling that had been hers so often since
Pollyanna's arrival, had her now fast in its grip.
"Of course I knew," hurried on Pollyanna, gratefully, "that you
wouldn't let a dear little lonesome kitty go hunting for a home
when you'd just taken ME in; and I said so to Mrs. Ford when she
asked if you'd let me keep it. Why, I had the Ladies' Aid, you
know, and kitty didn't have anybody. I knew you'd feel that way,"
she nodded happily, as she ran from the room.
"But, Pollyanna, Pollyanna," remonstrated Miss Polly. "I don't--"
But Pollyanna was already halfway to the kitchen, calling:
"Nancy, Nancy, just see this dear little kitty that Aunt Polly is
going to bring up along with me!" And Aunt Polly, in the sitting
room--who abhorred cats--fell back in her chair with a gasp of
dismay, powerless to remonstrate.
The next day it was a dog, even dirtier and more forlorn,
perhaps, than was the kitten; and again Miss Polly, to her
dumfounded amazement, found herself figuring as a kind protector
and an angel of mercy--a role that Pollyanna so unhesitatingly
thrust upon her as a matter of course, that the woman--who
abhorred dogs even more than she did cats, if possible--found
herself as before, powerless to remonstrate.
When, in less than a week, however, Pollyanna brought home a
small, ragged boy, and confidently claimed the same protection
for him, Miss Polly did have something to say. It happened after
this wise.
On a pleasant Thursday morning Pollyanna had been taking
calf's-foot jelly again to Mrs. Snow. Mrs. Snow and Pollyanna
were the best of friends now. Their friendship had started from
the third visit Pollyanna had made, the one after she had told
Mrs. Snow of the game. Mrs. Snow herself was playing the game
now, with Pollyanna. To be sure, she was not playing it very
well--she had been sorry for everything for so long, that it was
not easy to be glad for anything now. But under Pollyanna's
cheery instructions and merry laughter at her mistakes, she was
learning fast. To-day, even, to Pollyanna's huge delight, she had
said that she was glad Pollyanna brought calf's-foot jelly,
because that was just what she had been wanting--she did not know
that Milly, at the front door, had told Pollyanna that the
minister's wife had already that day sent over a great bowlful of
that same kind of jelly.
Pollyanna was thinking of this now when suddenly she saw the boy.
The boy was sitting in a disconsolate little heap by the
roadside, whittling half-heartedly at a small stick.
"Hullo," smiled Pollyanna, engagingly.
The boy glanced up, but he looked away again, at once.
"Hullo yourself," he mumbled.
Pollyanna laughed.
"Now you don't look as if you'd be glad even for calf's-foot
jelly," she chuckled, stopping before him.
The boy stirred restlessly, gave her a surprised look, and began
to whittle again at his stick, with the dull, broken-bladed knife
in his hand.
Pollyanna hesitated, then dropped herself comfortably down on the
grass near him. In spite of Pollyanna's brave assertion that she
was "used to Ladies' Aiders," and "didn't mind," she had sighed
at times for some companion of her own age. Hence her
determination to make the most of this one.
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