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Page 86
"The 'glad game'?" asked the man. "Oh, yes; she told me of that."
"Oh, she did! Well, I guess she has told it generally ter most
folks. But ye see, now she--she can't play it herself, an' it
worries her. She says she can't think of a thing--not a thing
about this not walkin' again, ter be glad about."
"Well, why should she?" retorted the man, almost savagely.
Nancy shifted her feet uneasily.
"That's the way I felt, too--till I happened ter think--it WOULD
be easier if she could find somethin', ye know. So I tried to--to
remind her."
"To remind her! Of what?" John Pendleton's voice was still
angrily impatient.
"Of--of how she told others ter play it Mis' Snow, and the rest,
ye know--and what she said for them ter do. But the poor little
lamb just cries, an' says it don't seem the same, somehow. She
says it's easy ter TELL lifelong invalids how ter be glad, but
'tain't the same thing when you're the lifelong invalid yerself,
an' have ter try ter do it. She says she's told herself over an'
over again how glad she is that other folks ain't like her; but
that all the time she's sayin' it, she ain't really THINKIN' of
anythin' only how she can't ever walk again."
Nancy paused, but the man did not speak. He sat with his hand
over his eyes.
"Then I tried ter remind her how she used ter say the game was
all the nicer ter play when--when it was hard," resumed Nancy, in
a dull voice. "But she says that, too, is diff'rent--when it
really IS hard. An' I must be goin', now, sir," she broke off
abruptly.
At the door she hesitated, turned, and asked timidly:
"I couldn't be tellin' Miss Pollyanna that--that you'd seen Jimmy
Bean again, I s'pose, sir, could I?"
"I don't see how you could--as I haven't seen him," observed the
man a little shortly. "Why?"
"Nothin', sir, only--well, ye see, that's one of the things that
she was feelin' bad about, that she couldn't take him ter see
you, now. She said she'd taken him once, but she didn't think he
showed off very well that day, and that she was afraid you didn't
think he would make a very nice child's presence, after all.
Maybe you know what she means by that; but I didn't, sir."
"Yes, I know--what she means."
"All right, sir. It was only that she was wantin' ter take him
again, she said, so's ter show ye he really was a lovely child's
presence. And now she--can't--drat that autymobile! I begs yer
pardon, sir. Good-by!" And Nancy fled precipitately.
It did not take long for the entire town of Beldingsville to
learn that the great New York doctor had said Pollyanna Whittier
would never walk again; and certainly never before had the town
been so stirred. Everybody knew by sight now the piquant little
freckled face that had always a smile of greeting; and almost
everybody knew of the "game" that Pollyanna was playing. To think
that now never again would that smiling face be seen on their
streets--never again would that cheery little voice proclaim the
gladness of some everyday experience! It seemed unbelievable,
impossible, cruel.
In kitchens and sitting rooms, and over back-yard fences women
talked of it, and wept openly. On street corners and in store
lounging-places the men talked, too, and wept--though not so
openly. And neither the talking nor the weeping grew less when
fast on the heels of the news itself, came Nancy's pitiful story
that Pollyanna, face to face with what had come to her, was
bemoaning most of all the fact that she could not play the game;
that she could not now be glad over--anything.
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