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- Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
"... there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it." When Pollyanna Whittier's father dies she is sent to live with her Aunt Polly in Beldingsville in Vermont. A clash of personalities ensues as Pollyanna's sunny disposition sits ill with her aunt's need for quiet, her passion for shutting windows and her obsession with quietly shut doors. The key to Pollyanna's happiness is The Glad Game. No matter how dark the situation it is always possible to find something to be glad about. A bread and milk supper in the kitchen is greeted with rapture; a puritan attic bedroom with sparse furnishing is seen as valued for its rapturous views - better than any decoration could ever be. As Pollyanna becomes acquainted with other inhabitants of the town, her infectious personality continues to spread: one by one, the cantankerous residents fall victim to her charms: Mrs Snow and Mr Pendleton being the hardest cases to crack. However, the arrival of a motor car in town heralds a tragic change in Pollyanna's life which not even Pollyanna looks likely to be able to overcome. A timeless classic that has spawned many spin-off novels, films and television serials and truly entered the folklore and consciousness - 'Pollyanna' is now a byword for, sometimes naïve, optimists. With this new edition Hesperus hopes to bring the tale to a new generation.
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pollyanna
eleanor h. porter
to my cousin belle
Contents
foreword
From time to time, an author will create a character so special that they not only step off the page into our everyday language, but exemplify even to those who have never read the book concerned some psychological feature that we all recognise. We do not need to have read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to know exactly what is meant by ‘She’s a right Scrooge’. We may not have been raised on A.A. Milne’s tales about Christopher Robin and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood, but we still know that someone who is described as ‘a bit of an Eeyore’ is being tagged for gloom and pessimism, rather than for any donkeyish characteristics.
The words Pollyanna and Pollyannaish have both passed so unequivocally into the language that they have definitions in every dictionary. And in the sheer discrepancy between these definitions lies part of the interest of the book. Merriam-Webster defines a Pollyanna as ‘someone who thinks good things will always happen and finds something good in everything’. The Oxford and Collins dictionaries both offer a hint of something more off-putting: in the former, a Pollyanna is ‘an excessively cheerful or optimistic person’ and in the latter, ‘a person who is constantly or excessively optimistic’. The newest online dictionary goes even further. Here, a Pollyanna is ‘a person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic’.
The shades of difference in these definitions mirror the responses of readers of Eleanor H. Porter’s most famous novel. Some people love Pollyanna and others can’t stand her, with nothing getting on their nerves more than her relentless determination to see the best in things. Give Pollyanna a pair of crutches for a Christmas present and she will somehow manage to be more glad that she doesn’t have to use them than disappointed that she didn’t get the doll she craved. This child who, though her parents’ poverty, has always been starved of luxuries like carpets and mirrors is put in a bare and ugly attic room, and she can quite sincerely make herself thrilled with the view.
How did she get this way?
Through love. Her parents married for it, and though her mother is now dead, all Pollyanna’s early childhood has been steeped in it. Money was short, so Pollyanna’s father, a pastor, taught her the ‘glad game’ – that of finding good in everything. She knows it’s right, because it’s based on the 800 ‘rejoicing texts’ that begin with things like, ‘Be glad in the Lord’, or, ‘Rejoice greatly’, or ‘Shout for joy’. She’s played the game so long the habit runs through her like letters stamped through seaside rock. So it’s small wonder that, when Pollyanna’s father dies in turn, and Pollyanna is sent away, aged just eleven, to a cold aunt who doesn’t want her, she should cling to this vestige of her past as to a life-raft.
That’s where the book starts, with this relentlessly cheerful and optimistic child sweeping into the lives of the pinched, ungenerous and disapproving spinster Miss Polly Harrington and her astonished servants. She simply never stops talking. She can’t be ignored. She can’t even be squashed by punishment. Give Pollyanna a supper of only bread and milk and she’ll declare how much she loves it. And she’s not even saying it to be contrary and deny her aunt the pleasures of reproof. She truly means it.
That’s because Pollyanna sees good in everyone around her, and always puts the most generous interpretation on things. Her aunt forbids her to talk about her dead father, and Pollyanna simply assumes Miss Harrington has her best interests at heart. ‘“I reckon I’m glad she doesn’t want me to talk about father,”’ she tells herself. ‘“It’ll be easier, maybe – if I don’t talk about him. Probably, anyhow, that is why she told me not to talk about him.” And Pollyanna, convinced anew of her aunt’s kindness, blinked off the tears and looked eagerly about her.’
Gradually this extraordinary and ebullient child works her way into the lives of all the sad and ill and lonely people in the little town. She changes everyone, and in the end she changes all their lives. It’s an enchanting story, stuffed with richly delineated characters, studded with fast-moving conversations, bolstered by a perfectly acceptable plot and offering the most satisfying of endings. It is no accident that this book, first published in America over a hundred years ago, has become such a much-loved world classic.
Eleanor Hodgman was born in New Hampshire in 1868. She studied music, and was a concert singer and, later, a teacher. She married John L. Porter in 1892 and by 1901 was writing full-time for both adults and children under the names Eleanor H. Porter and Eleanor Stuart. Like most of the writers of the period, she had been reared on the sort of evangelical stories, like Little Lord Fauntleroy, in which an innocent child brings happiness to some crabbed, miserable elder. Pollyanna spreads her skills wider. In the course of the novel she single-handedly brings cheer to, amongst others, a determinedly self-pitying invalid, a crabby miser, a grieving widow, a homeless orphan boy, a despairing preacher, a couple of small animals and, finally, to her own aunt and the suitor Miss Polly had so foolishly refused to marry fifteen years before – an enviable record of success in a crowded genre!
A principal theme in the novel is the conflict between duty and love. Pollyanna’s mother became estranged from the family in the first place only because she married for love. (And evidently the affection for her own family never faded, since Pollyanna’s very name is a combination of that of her mother’s two sisters.) Miss Polly Harrington only takes the child in because ‘I hope I know my duty.’ And when Pollyanna arrives, Miss Harrington ‘held out a hand with “duty” written large on every coldly extended finger’. Indeed, duty informs all the spinster’s decisions, so it is no surprise that Pollyanna, who was raised instead to value love and generosity, and spread it round her, is to her aunt both a frustration and a mystery.
Pollyanna is a free spirit. Even before school begins in the autumn, Miss Polly is determined to arrange her niece’s instruction in music, sewing, reading and cooking. Dismayed by the amount of time all these extra lessons will take, Pollyanna cries out, ‘Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven’t left me any time at all just to – to live.’ Miss Harrington, in contrast, refers to the acquisition of these skills as ‘learning to live’. There’s such a modern resonance to this. One of the great anxieties about current educational practice – and indeed childhood itself – is that, in filling every minute of a child’s waking life, something of even greater importance than educational ‘enrichment’ is being lost.
But most of all, this is a story about how people can change. Cynics might argue. Way back in 1913 the theatre critic Alexander Woollcott complained of ‘this philosophy of contentment, this suffocating gospel of the grin’. Become as skilled as Pollyanna is at viewing what happens in a positive way, he warns, and you can all too easily end up as one who ‘worships things as they are’ – rather than, presumably trying to alter them for the better. No, Pollyanna’s philosophy is definitely not for some.
And yet her way of looking at the world does echo one of the principal recommendations of many of those who’d teach us to be happier. She’s not the mindless optimist that her detractors claim. She simply uses the method she’s been taught to keep herself from misery and despair. ‘When you’re hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind.’ And that’s a healthy lesson for any reader who has grown up in a world where they’ve been led to think that happiness will come from getting this, and having that.
Most of this book’s readers come across it first at an age at which their personal development is, even if unconsciously, a live and serious issue. This novel tells you that you can be different. You’re free to choose new attitudes and behaviour. Young readers respond to this sort of encouragement as if it springs from the page in quite as colourful a fashion as Pollyanna arrived in Beldingsville with her flaxen hair and freckles and red-checked gingham frock.
Youth is a time of life during which so many of us long to be in a different family or in a different school. It’s liberating and exhilarating to be reminded by the fiction we read that we can even be a different self. I can remember one of my own daughters solemnly telling me in bed one night, ‘I think, because I’m very good at saying mean and spiteful things, I’ve done it far too often. And I’m not going to do it any more.’
For all I know, the lovely, generous-spirited daughter I treasure now had just been reading Pollyanna.
– Anne Fine, 2014
chapter one
miss polly
Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But today she was hurrying – actually hurrying.
Nancy, washing dishes at the sink, looked up in surprise. Nancy had been working in Miss Polly’s kitchen only two months, but already she knew that her mistress did not usually hurry.
‘Nancy!’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Nancy answered cheerfully, but she still continued wiping the pitcher in her hand.
‘Nancy,’ – Miss Polly’s voice was very stern now – ‘when I’m talking to you, I wish you to stop your work and listen to what I have to say.’
Nancy flushed miserably. She set the pitcher down at once, with the cloth still about it, thereby nearly tipping it over – which did not add to her composure.
‘Yes, ma’am; I will, ma’am,’ she stammered, righting the pitcher, and turning hastily. ‘I was only keepin’ on with my work ’cause you specially told me this mornin’ ter hurry with my dishes, ye know.’
Her mistress frowned.
‘That will do, Nancy. I did not ask for explanations. I asked for your attention.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Nancy stifled a sigh. She was wondering if ever in any way she could please this woman. Nancy had never ‘worked out’ before; but a sick mother suddenly widowed and left with three younger children besides Nancy herself, had forced the girl into doing something toward their support, and she had been so pleased when she found a place in the kitchen of the great house on the hill – Nancy had come from ‘The Corners’, six miles away, and she knew Miss Polly Harrington only as the mistress of the old Harrington homestead, and one of the wealthiest residents of the town. That was two months before. She knew Miss Polly now as a stern, severe-faced woman who frowned if a knife clattered to the floor, or if a door banged – but who never thought to smile even when knives and doors were still.
‘When you’ve finished your morning work, Nancy,’ Miss Polly was saying now, ‘you may clear the little room at the head of the stairs in the attic, and make up the cot bed. Sweep the room and clean it, of course, after you clear out the trunks and boxes.’
‘Yes, ma’am. And where shall I put the things, please, that I take out?’
‘In the front attic.’ Miss Polly hesitated, then went on: ‘I suppose I may as well tell you now, Nancy. My niece, Miss Pollyanna Whittier, is coming to live with me. She is eleven years old, and will sleep in that room.’
‘A little girl – coming here, Miss Harrington? Oh, won’t that be nice!’ cried Nancy, thinking of the sunshine her own little sisters made in the home at ‘The Corners’.
‘Nice? Well, that isn’t exactly the word I should use,’ rejoined Miss Polly, stiffly. ‘However, I intend to make the best of it, of course. I am a good woman, I hope; and I know my duty.’
Nancy colored hotly.
‘Of course, ma’am; it was only that I thought a little girl here might – might brighten things up for you,’ she faltered.
‘Thank you,’ rejoined the lady, dryly. ‘I can’t say, however, that I see any immediate need for that.’
‘But, of course, you – you’d want her, your sister’s child,’ ventured Nancy, vaguely feeling that somehow she must prepare a welcome for this lonely little stranger.
Miss Polly lifted her chin haughtily.
‘Well, really, Nancy, just because I happened to have a sister who was silly enough to marry and bring unnecessary children into a world that was already quite full enough, I can’t see how I should particularly want to have the care of them myself. However, as I said before, I hope I know my duty. See that you clean the corners, Nancy,’ she finished sharply, as she left the room.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ sighed Nancy, picking up the half-dried pitcher – now so cold it must be rinsed again.
In her own room, Miss Polly took out once more the letter which she had received two days before from the faraway Western town, and which had been so unpleasant a surprise to her. The letter was addressed to ‘Miss Polly Harrington, Beldingsville, Vermont’; and it read as follows:
Dear Madam,
I regret to inform you that the Rev. John Whittier died two weeks ago, leaving one child, a girl eleven years old. He left practically nothing else save a few books; for, as you doubtless know, he was the pastor of this small mission church, and had a very meagre salary.
I believe he was your deceased sister’s husband, but he gave me to understand the families were not on the best of terms. He thought, however, that for your sister’s sake you might wish to take the child and bring her up among her own people in the East. Hence I am writing to you.
The little girl will be all ready to start by the time you get this letter; and if you can take her, we would appreciate it very much if you would write that she might come at once, as there is a man and his wife here who are going East very soon, and they would take her with them to Boston, and put her on the Beldingsville train. Of course you would be notified what day and train to expect Pollyanna on.
Hoping to hear favorably from you soon, I remain,
Respectfully yours,
Jeremiah O. White.
With a frown Miss Polly folded the letter and tucked it into its envelope. She had answered it the day before, and she had said she would take the child, of course. She hoped she knew her duty well enough for that! – disagreeable as the task would be.
As she sat now, with the letter in her hands, her thoughts went back to her sister, Jennie, who had been this child’s mother, and to the time when Jennie, as a girl of twenty, had insisted upon marrying the young minister, in spite of her family’s remonstrances. There had been a man of wealth who had wanted her – and the family had much preferred him to the minister; but Jennie had not. The man of wealth had more years, as well as more money, to his credit, while the minister had only a young head full of youth’s ideals and enthusiasm, and a heart full of love. Jennie had preferred these – quite naturally, perhaps; so she had married the minister, and had gone south with him as a home missionary’s wife.
The break had come then. Miss Polly remembered it well, though she had been but a girl of fifteen, the youngest, at the time. The family had had little more to do with the missionary’s wife. To be sure, Jennie herself had written, for a time, and had named her last baby ‘Pollyanna’ for her two sisters, Polly and Anna – the other babies had all died. This had been the last time that Jennie had written; and in a few years there had come the news of her death, told in a short, but heartbroken little note from the minister himself, dated at a little town in the West.
Meanwhile, time had not stood still for the occupants of the great house on the hill. Miss Polly, looking out at the far-reaching valley below, thought of the changes those twenty-five years had brought to her.
She was forty now, and quite alone in the world. Father, mother, sisters – all were dead. For years, now, she had been sole mistress of the house and of the thousands left her by her father. There were people who had openly pitied her lonely life, and who had urged her to have some friend or companion to live with her; but she had not welcomed either their sympathy or their advice. She was not lonely, she said. She liked being by herself. She preferred quiet. But now –
Miss Polly rose with frowning face and closely shut lips. She was glad, of course, that she was a good woman, and that she not only knew her duty, but had sufficient strength of character to perform it. But – Pollyanna! – what a ridiculous name!
chapter two
old tom and nancy
In the little attic room Nancy swept and scrubbed vigorously, paying particular attention to the corners. There were times, indeed, when the vigor she put into her work was more of a relief to her feelings than it was an ardor to efface dirt – Nancy, in spite of her frightened submission to her mistress, was no saint.
‘I – just – wish – I could – dig – out the corners – of – her – soul!’ she muttered jerkily, punctuating her words with murderous jabs of her pointed cleaning-stick. ‘There’s plenty of ’em needs cleanin’ all right, all right! The idea of stickin’ that blessed child ’way off up here in this hot little room – with no fire in the winter, too, and all this big house ter pick and choose from! Unnecessary children, indeed! Humph!’ snapped Nancy, wringing her rag so hard her fingers ached from the strain; ‘I guess it ain’t children what is most unnecessary just now, just now!’
For some time she worked in silence; then, her task finished, she looked about the bare little room in plain disgust.
‘Well, it’s done – my part, anyhow,’ she sighed. ‘There ain’t no dirt here – and there’s mighty little else. Poor little soul! a pretty place this is ter put a homesick, lonesome child into!’ she finished, going out and closing the door with a bang, ‘Oh!’ she ejaculated, biting her lip. Then, doggedly: ‘Well, I don’t care. I hope she did hear the bang, – I do, I do!’
In the garden that afternoon, Nancy found a few minutes in which to interview Old Tom, who had pulled the weeds and shovelled the paths about the place for uncounted years.
‘Mr Tom,’ began Nancy, throwing a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure she was unobserved; ‘did you know a little girl was comin’ here ter live with Miss Polly?’
‘A – what?’ demanded the old man, straightening his bent back with difficulty.
‘A little girl – to live with Miss Polly.’
‘Go on with yer jokin’,’ scoffed unbelieving Tom. ‘Why don’t ye tell me the sun is a-goin’ ter set in the east ter-morrer?’
‘But it’s true. She told me so herself,’ maintained Nancy. ‘It’s her niece; and she’s eleven years old.’
The man’s jaw fell.
‘Sho! – I wonder, now,’ he muttered; then a tender light came into his faded eyes. ‘It ain’t – but it must be – Miss Jennie’s little gal! There wasn’t none of the rest of ’em married. Why, Nancy, it must be Miss Jennie’s little gal. Glory be ter praise! ter think of my old eyes a-seein’ this!’
‘Who was Miss Jennie?’
‘She was an angel straight out of Heaven,’ breathed the man, fervently; ‘but the old master and missus knew her as their oldest daughter. She was twenty when she married and went away from here long years ago. Her babies all died, I heard, except the last one; and that must be the one what’s a-comin’.’
‘She’s eleven years old.’
‘Yes, she might be,’ nodded the old man.
‘And she’s goin’ ter sleep in the attic – more shame ter her!’ scolded Nancy, with another glance over her shoulder toward the house behind her.
Old Tom frowned. The next moment a curious smile curved his lips.
‘I’m a-wonderin’ what Miss Polly will do with a child in the house,’ he said.
‘Humph! Well, I’m a-wonderin’ what a child will do with Miss Polly in the house!’ snapped Nancy.
The old man laughed.
‘I’m afraid you ain’t fond of Miss Polly,’ he grinned.
‘As if ever anybody could be fond of her!’ scorned Nancy.
Old Tom smiled oddly. He stooped and began to work again.
‘I guess maybe you didn’t know about Miss Polly’s love affair,’ he said slowly.
‘Love affair – her! No! – and I guess nobody else didn’t, neither.’
‘Oh, yes they did,’ nodded the old man. ‘And the feller’s livin’ ter-day – right in this town, too.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I ain’t a-tellin’ that. It ain’t fit that I should.’ The old man drew himself erect. In his dim blue eyes, as he faced the house, there was the loyal servant’s honest pride in the family he has served and loved for long years.
‘But it don’t seem possible – her and a lover,’ still maintained Nancy.
Old Tom shook his head.
‘You didn’t know Miss Polly as I did,’ he argued. ‘She used ter be real handsome – and she would be now, if she’d let herself be.’
‘Handsome! Miss Polly!’
‘Yes. If she’d just let that tight hair of hern all out loose and careless-like, as it used ter be, and wear the sort of bunnits with posies in ‘em, and the kind o’ dresses all lace and white things – you’d see she’d be handsome! Miss Polly ain’t old, Nancy.’
‘Ain’t she, though? Well, then she’s got an awfully good imitation of it – she has, she has!’ sniffed Nancy.
‘Yes, I know. It begun then – at the time of the trouble with her lover,’ nodded Old Tom; ‘and it seems as if she’d been feedin’ on wormwood an’ thistles ever since – she’s that bitter an’ prickly ter deal with.’
‘I should say she was,’ declared Nancy, indignantly. ‘There’s no pleasin’ her, nohow, no matter how you try! I wouldn’t stay if ‘twa’n’t for the wages and the folks at home what’s needin’ ’em. But some day – some day I shall jest b’ile over; and when I do, of course it’ll be goodbye Nancy for me. It will, it will.’
Old Tom shook his head.
‘I know. I’ve felt it. It’s nart’ral – but ’tain’t best, child; ’tain’t best. Take my word for it, ’tain’t best.’ And again he bent his old head to the work before him.
‘Nancy!’ called a sharp voice.
‘Y–yes, ma’am,’ stammered Nancy; and hurried toward the house.
chapter three
the coming of pollyanna
In due time came the telegram announcing that Pollyanna would arrive in Beldingsville the next day, the twenty-fifth of June, at four o’clock. Miss Polly read the telegram, frowned, then climbed the stairs to the attic room. She still frowned as she looked about her.
The room contained a small bed, neatly made, two straight-backed chairs, a washstand, a bureau – without any mirror – and a small table. There were no drapery curtains at the dormer windows, no pictures on the wall. All day the sun had been pouring down upon the roof, and the little room was like an oven for heat. As there were no screens, the windows had not been raised. A big fly was buzzing angrily at one of them now, up and down, up and down, trying to get out.
Miss Polly killed the fly, swept it through the window (raising the sash an inch for the purpose), straightened a chair, frowned again, and left the room.
‘Nancy,’ she said a few minutes later, at the kitchen door, ‘I found a fly upstairs in Miss Pollyanna’s room. The window must have been raised at some time. I have ordered screens, but until they come I shall expect you to see that the windows remain closed. My niece will arrive tomorrow at four o’clock. I desire you to meet her at the station. Timothy will take the open buggy and drive you over. The telegram says “light hair, red-checked gingham dress, and straw hat”. That is all I know, but I think it is sufficient for your purpose.’
‘Yes, ma’am; but – you –’
Miss Polly evidently read the pause aright, for she frowned and said crisply:
‘No, I shall not go. It is not necessary that I should, I think. That is all.’ And she turned away – Miss Polly’s arrangements for the comfort of her niece, Pollyanna, were complete.
In the kitchen, Nancy sent her flatiron with a vicious dig across the dish-towel she was ironing.
‘“Light hair, red-checked gingham dress, and straw hat” – all she knows, indeed! Well, I’d be ashamed ter own it up, that I would, I would – and her my onliest niece what was a-comin’ from ’way across the continent!’
Promptly at twenty minutes to four the next afternoon Timothy and Nancy drove off in the open buggy to meet the expected guest. Timothy was Old Tom’s son. It was sometimes said in the town that if Old Tom was Miss Polly’s right-hand man, Timothy was her left.
Timothy was a good-natured youth, and a good-looking one, as well. Short as had been Nancy’s stay at the house, the two were already good friends. Today, however, Nancy was too full of her mission to be her usual talkative self; and almost in silence she took the drive to the station and alighted to wait for the train.
Over and over in her mind she was saying it ‘light hair, red-checked dress, straw hat’. Over and over again she was wondering just what sort of child this Pollyanna was, anyway.
‘I hope for her sake she’s quiet and sensible, and don’t drop knives nor bang doors,’ she sighed to Timothy, who had sauntered up to her.
‘Well, if she ain’t, nobody knows what’ll become of the rest of us,’ grinned Timothy. ‘Imagine Miss Polly and a noisy kid! Gorry! there goes the whistle now!’
‘Oh, Timothy, I – I think it was mean ter send me,’ chattered the suddenly frightened Nancy, as she turned and hurried to a point where she could best watch the passengers alight at the little station.
It was not long before Nancy saw her – the slender little girl in the red-checked gingham with two fat braids of flaxen hair hanging down her back. Beneath the straw hat, an eager, freckled little face turned to the right and to the left, plainly searching for someone.
Nancy knew the child at once, but not for some time could she control her shaking knees sufficiently to go to her. The little girl was standing quite by herself when Nancy finally did approach her.
‘Are you Miss – Pollyanna?’ she faltered. The next moment she found herself half-smothered in the clasp of two gingham-clad arms.
‘Oh, I’m so glad, glad, glad to see you,’ cried an eager voice in her ear. ‘Of course I’m Pollyanna, and I’m so glad you came to meet me! I hoped you would.’
‘You – you did?’ stammered Nancy, vaguely wondering how Pollyanna could possibly have known her – and wanted her. ‘You – you did?’ she repeated, trying to straighten her hat.
‘Oh, yes; and I’ve been wondering all the way here what you looked like,’ cried the little girl, dancing on her toes, and sweeping the embarrassed Nancy from head to foot, with her eyes. ‘And now I know, and I’m glad you look just like you do look.’
Nancy was relieved just then to have Timothy come up. Pollyanna’s words had been most confusing.
‘This is Timothy. Maybe you have a trunk,’ she stammered.
‘Yes, I have,’ nodded Pollyanna, importantly. ‘I’ve got a brand-new one. The Ladies’ Aid bought it for me – and wasn’t it lovely of them, when they wanted the carpet so? Of course I don’t know how much red carpet a trunk could buy, but it ought to buy some, anyhow – much as half an aisle, don’t you think? I’ve got a little thing here in my bag that Mr Gray said was a check, and that I must give it to you before I could get my trunk. Mr Gray is Mrs Gray’s husband. They’re cousins of Deacon Carr’s wife. I came East with them, and they’re lovely! And – there, here ’tis,’ she finished, producing the check after much fumbling in the bag she carried.
Nancy drew a long breath. Instinctively she felt that someone had to draw one – after that speech. Then she stole a glance at Timothy. Timothy’s eyes were studiously turned away.
The three were off at last, with Pollyanna’s trunk in behind, and Pollyanna herself snugly ensconced between Nancy and Timothy. During the whole process of getting started, the little girl had kept up an uninterrupted stream of comments and questions, until the somewhat dazed Nancy found herself quite out of breath trying to keep up with her.
‘There! Isn’t this lovely? Is it far? I hope ’tis – I love to ride,’ sighed Pollyanna, as the wheels began to turn. ‘Of course, if ’tisn’t far, I sha’n’t mind, though, ’cause I’ll be glad to get there all the sooner, you know. What a pretty street! I knew ’twas going to be pretty; father told me –’
She stopped with a little choking breath. Nancy, looking at her apprehensively, saw that her small chin was quivering, and that her eyes were full of tears. In a moment, however, she hurried on, with a brave lifting of her head.
‘Father told me all about it. He remembered. And – and I ought to have explained before. Mrs Gray told me to, at once – about this red gingham dress, you know, and why I’m not in black. She said you’d think ’twas queer. But there weren’t any black things in the last missionary barrel, only a lady’s velvet basque which Deacon Carr’s wife said wasn’t suitable for me at all; besides, it had white spots – worn, you know – on both elbows, and some other places. Part of the Ladies’ Aid wanted to buy me a black dress and hat, but the other part thought the money ought to go toward the red carpet they’re trying to get – for the church, you know. Mrs White said maybe it was just as well, anyway, for she didn’t like children in black – that is, I mean, she liked the children, of course, but not the black part.’
Pollyanna paused for breath, and Nancy managed to stammer:
‘Well, I’m sure it – it’ll be all right.’
‘I’m glad you feel that way. I do, too,’ nodded Pollyanna, again with that choking little breath. ‘Of course, ’twould have been a good deal harder to be glad in black –’
‘Glad!’ gasped Nancy, surprised into an interruption.
‘Yes – that father’s gone to Heaven to be with mother and the rest of us, you know. He said I must be glad. But it’s been pretty hard to – to do it, even in red gingham, because I – I wanted him, so; and I couldn’t help feeling I ought to have him, specially as mother and the rest have God and all the angels, while I didn’t have anybody but the Ladies’ Aid. But now I’m sure it’ll be easier because I’ve got you, Aunt Polly. I’m so glad I’ve got you!’
Nancy’s aching sympathy for the poor little forlornness beside her turned suddenly into shocked terror.
‘Oh, but – but you’ve made an awful mistake, d-dear,’ she faltered. ‘I’m only Nancy. I ain’t your Aunt Polly, at all!’
‘You – you aren’t?’ stammered the little girl, in plain dismay.
‘No. I’m only Nancy. I never thought of your takin’ me for her. We – we ain’t a bit alike we ain’t, we ain’t!’
Timothy chuckled softly; but Nancy was too disturbed to answer the merry flash from his eyes.
‘But who are you?’ questioned Pollyanna. ‘You don’t look a bit like a Ladies’ Aider!’
Timothy laughed outright this time.
‘I’m Nancy, the hired girl. I do all the work except the washin’ an’ hard ironin’. Mis’ Durgin does that.’
‘But there is an Aunt Polly?’ demanded the child, anxiously.
‘You bet your life there is,’ cut in Timothy.
Pollyanna relaxed visibly.
‘Oh, that’s all right, then.’ There was a moment’s silence, then she went on brightly: ‘And do you know? I’m glad, after all, that she didn’t come to meet me; because now I’ve got her still coming, and I’ve got you besides.’
Nancy flushed. Timothy turned to her with a quizzical smile.
‘I call that a pretty slick compliment,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you thank the little lady?’
‘I – I was thinkin’ about – Miss Polly,’ faltered Nancy.
Pollyanna sighed contentedly.
‘I was, too. I’m so interested in her. You know she’s all the aunt I’ve got, and I didn’t know I had her for ever so long. Then father told me. He said she lived in a lovely great big house ’way on top of a hill.’
‘She does. You can see it now,’ said Nancy.
‘It’s that big white one with the green blinds, ’way ahead.’
‘Oh, how pretty! and what a lot of trees and grass all around it! I never saw such a lot of green grass, seems so, all at once. Is my Aunt Polly rich, Nancy?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
‘I’m so glad. It must be perfectly lovely to have lots of money. I never knew anyone that did have, only the Whites – they’re some rich. They have carpets in every room and ice-cream Sundays. Does Aunt Polly have ice-cream Sundays?’
Nancy shook her head. Her lips twitched. She threw a merry look into Timothy’s eyes.
‘No, Miss. Your aunt don’t like ice cream, I guess; leastways I never saw it on her table.’
Pollyanna’s face fell.
‘Oh, doesn’t she? I’m so sorry! I don’t see how she can help liking ice cream. But – anyhow, I can be kinder glad about that, ’cause the ice cream you don’t eat can’t make your stomach ache like Mrs White’s did – that is, I ate hers, you know, lots of it. Maybe Aunt Polly has got the carpets, though.’
‘Yes, she’s got the carpets.’
‘In every room?’
