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Page 78
"Pollyanna!"
Pollyanna laughed softly again. She turned luminous eyes on her
aunt. "Well, you see, since I have been hurt, you've called me
'dear' lots of times--and you didn't before. I love to be called
'dear'--by folks that belong to you, I mean. Some of the Ladies'
Aiders did call me that; and of course that was pretty nice, but
not so nice as if they had belonged to me, like you do. Oh, Aunt
Polly, I'm so glad you belong to me!"
Aunt Polly did not answer. Her hand was at her throat again. Her
eyes were full of tears. She had turned away and was hurrying
from the room through the door by which the nurse had just
entered.
It was that afternoon that Nancy ran out to Old Tom, who was
cleaning harnesses in the barn. Her eyes were wild.
"Mr. Tom, Mr. Tom, guess what's happened," she panted. "You
couldn't guess in a thousand years--you couldn't, you couldn't!"
"Then I cal'late I won't try," retorted the man, grimly,
"specially as I hain't got more'n TEN ter live, anyhow, probably.
You'd better tell me first off, Nancy."
"Well, listen, then. Who do you s'pose is in the parlor now with
the mistress? Who, I say?"
Old Tom shook his head.
"There's no tellin'," he declared.
"Yes, there is. I'm tellin'. It's--John Pendleton!"
"Sho, now! You're jokin', girl."
"Not much I am--an' me a-lettin' him in myself--crutches an' all!
An' the team he come in a-waitin' this minute at the door for
him, jest as if he wa'n't the cranky old crosspatch he is, what
never talks ter no one! jest think, Mr. Tom--HIM a-callin' on
HER!"
"Well, why not?" demanded the old man, a little aggressively.
Nancy gave him a scornful glance.
"As if you didn't know better'n me!" she derided.
"Eh?"
"Oh, you needn't be so innercent," she retorted with mock
indignation; "--you what led me wildgoose chasin' in the first
place!"
"What do ye mean?"
Nancy glanced through the open barn door toward the house, and
came a step nearer to the old man.
"Listen! 'Twas you that was tellin' me Miss Polly had a lover in
the first place, wa'n't it? Well, one day I thinks I finds two
and two, and I puts 'em tergether an' makes four. But it turns
out ter be five--an' no four at all, at all!"
With a gesture of indifference Old Tom turned and fell to work.
"If you're goin' ter talk ter me, you've got ter talk plain horse
sense," he declared testily. "I never was no hand for figgers."
Nancy laughed.
"Well, it's this," she explained. "I heard somethin' that made me
think him an' Miss Polly was lovers."
"MR. PENDLETON!" Old Tom straightened up.
"Yes. Oh, I know now; he wasn't. It was that blessed child's
mother he was in love with, and that's why he wanted--but never
mind that part," she added hastily, remembering just in time her
promise to Pollyanna not to tell that Mr. Pendleton had wished
her to come and live with him. "Well, I've been askin' folks
about him some, since, and I've found out that him an' Miss Polly
hain't been friends for years, an' that she's been hatin' him
like pizen owin' ter the silly gossip that coupled their names
tergether when she was eighteen or twenty."
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