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Page 44
"There, there, child, I beg your pardon, I'm sure; it's only this
confounded leg of mine. Now listen." He paused, and with some
difficulty reached his hand into his trousers pocket and brought
out a bunch of keys, singling out one between his thumb and
forefinger. "Straight through the path there, about five minutes'
walk, is my house. This key will admit you to the side door under
the porte-cochere. Do you know what a porte-cochere is?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Auntie has one with a sun parlor over it. That's
the roof I slept on--only I didn't sleep, you know. They found
me."
"Eh? Oh! Well, when you get into the house, go straight through
the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big,
flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you'll find a
telephone. Do you know how to use a telephone?"
"Oh, yes, sir! Why, once when Aunt Polly--"
"Never mind Aunt Polly now," cut in the man scowlingly, as he
tried to move himself a little.
"Hunt up Dr. Thomas Chilton's number on the card you'll find
somewhere around there--it ought to be on the hook down at the
side, but it probably won't be. You know a telephone card, I
suppose, when you see one!"
"Oh, yes, sir! I just love Aunt Polly's. There's such a lot of
queer names, and--"
"Tell Dr. Chilton that John Pendleton is at the foot of Little
Eagle Ledge in Pendleton Woods with a broken leg, and to come at
once with a stretcher and two men. He'll know what to do besides
that. Tell him to come by the path from the house."
"A broken leg? Oh, Mr. Pendleton, how perfectly awful!" shuddered
Pollyanna. "But I'm so glad I came! Can't _I_ do--"
"Yes, you can--but evidently you won't! WILL you go and do what I
ask and stop talking," moaned the man, faintly. And, with a
little sobbing cry, Pollyanna went.
Pollyanna did not stop now to look up at the patches of blue
between the sunlit tops of the trees. She kept her eyes on the
ground to make sure that no twig nor stone tripped her hurrying
feet.
It was not long before she came in sight of the house. She had
seen it before, though never so near as this. She was almost
frightened now at the massiveness of the great pile of gray stone
with its pillared verandas and its imposing entrance. Pausing
only a moment, however, she sped across the big neglected lawn
and around the house to the side door under the porte-cochere.
Her fingers, stiff from their tight clutch upon the keys, were
anything but skilful in their efforts to turn the bolt in the
lock; but at last the heavy, carved door swung slowly back on its
hinges.
Pollyanna caught her breath. In spite of her feeling of haste,
she paused a moment and looked fearfully through the vestibule to
the wide, sombre hall beyond, her thoughts in a whirl. This was
John Pendleton's house; the house of mystery; the house into
which no one but its master entered; the house which sheltered,
somewhere--a skeleton. Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter
alone these fearsome rooms, and telephone the doctor that the
master of the house lay now--
With a little cry Pollyanna, looking neither to the right nor the
left, fairly ran through the hall to the door at the end and
opened it.
The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and hangings like
the hall; but through the west window the sun threw a long shaft
of gold across the floor, gleamed dully on the tarnished brass
andirons in the fireplace, and touched the nickel of the
telephone on the great desk in the middle of the room. It was
toward this desk that Pollyanna hurriedly tiptoed.
The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the floor. But
Pollyanna found it, and ran her shaking forefinger down through
the C's to "Chilton." In due time she had Dr. Chilton himself at
the other end of the wires, and was tremblingly delivering her
message and answering the doctor's terse, pertinent questions.
This done, she hung up the receiver and drew a long breath of
relief.
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