“Humph!” she vouchsafed. Then, showing her old-time interest, she went on: “But, say, it is queer, his speakin’ to you, honestly, Miss Pollyanna. He don’t speak ter no one; and he lives all alone in a great big lovely house all full of jest grand things, they say. Some says he’s crazy, and some jest cross; and some says he’s got a skeleton in his closet.”
“Oh, Nancy!” shuddered Pollyanna. “How can he keep such a dreadful thing? I should think he’d throw it away!”
Nancy chuckled. That Pollyanna had taken the skeleton literally instead of figuratively, she knew very well; but, perversely, she refrained from correcting the mistake.
“And EVERYBODY says he’s mysterious,” she went on. “Some years he jest travels, week in and week out, and it’s always in heathen countries—Egypt and Asia and the Desert of Sarah, you know.”
“Oh, a missionary,” nodded Pollyanna.
Nancy laughed oddly.
“Well, I didn’t say that, Miss Pollyanna. When he comes back he writes books—queer, odd books, they say, about some gimcrack he’s found in them heathen countries. But he don’t never seem ter want ter spend no money here—leastways, not for jest livin’.”
“Of course not—if he’s saving it for the heathen,” declared Pollyanna. “But he is a funny man, and he’s different, too, just like Mrs. Snow, only he’s a different different.”
“Well, I guess he is—rather,” chuckled Nancy.
“I’m gladder’n ever now, anyhow, that he speaks to me,” sighed Pollyanna contentedly.
Chapter X.
A Surprise for Mrs. Snow
The next time Pollyanna went to see Mrs. Snow, she found that lady, as at first, in a darkened room.
“It’s the little girl from Miss Polly’s, mother,” announced Milly, in a tired manner; then Pollyanna found herself alone with the invalid.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” asked a fretful voice from the bed. “I remember you. ANYbody’d remember you, I guess, if they saw you once. I wish you had come yesterday. I WANTED you yesterday.”
“Did you? Well, I’m glad ‘tisn’t any farther away from yesterday than to-day is, then,” laughed Pollyanna, advancing cheerily into the room, and setting her basket carefully down on a chair. “My! but aren’t you dark here, though? I can’t see you a bit,” she cried, unhesitatingly crossing to the window and pulling up the shade. “I want to see if you’ve fixed your hair like I did—oh, you haven’t! But, never mind; I’m glad you haven’t, after all, ‘cause maybe you’ll let me do it—later. But now I want you to see what I’ve brought you.”
The woman stirred restlessly.
“Just as if how it looks would make any difference in how it tastes,” she scoffed—but she turned her eyes toward the basket. “Well, what is it?”
“Guess! What do you want?” Pollyanna had skipped back to the basket. Her face was alight. The sick woman frowned.
“Why, I don’t WANT anything, as I know of,” she sighed. “After all, they all taste alike!”
Pollyanna chuckled.
“This won’t. Guess! If you DID want something, what would it be?”
The woman hesitated. She did not realize it herself, but she had so long been accustomed to wanting what she did not have, that to state off-hand what she DID want seemed impossible—until she knew what she had. Obviously, however, she must say something. This extraordinary child was waiting.
“Well, of course, there’s lamb broth—”
“I’ve got it!” crowed Pollyanna.
“But that’s what I DIDN’T want,” sighed the sick woman, sure now of what her stomach craved. “It was chicken I wanted.”
“Oh, I’ve got that, too,” chuckled Pollyanna.
The woman turned in amazement.
“Both of them?” she demanded.
“Yes—and calf’s-foot jelly,” triumphed Pollyanna. “I was just bound you should have what you wanted for once; so Nancy and I fixed it. Oh, of course, there’s only a little of each—but there’s some of all of ‘em! I’m so glad you did want chicken,” she went on contentedly, as she lifted the three little bowls from her basket. “You see, I got to thinking on the way here—what if you should say tripe, or onions, or something like that, that I didn’t have! Wouldn’t it have been a shame—when I’d tried so hard?” she laughed merrily.
There was no reply. The sick woman seemed to be trying—mentally to find something she had lost.
“There! I’m to leave them all,” announced Pollyanna, as she arranged the three bowls in a row on the table. “Like enough it’ll be lamb broth you want to-morrow. How do you do to-day?” she finished in polite inquiry.
“Very poorly, thank you,” murmured Mrs. Snow, falling back into her usual listless attitude. “I lost my nap this morning. Nellie Higgins next door has begun music lessons, and her practising drives me nearly wild. She was at it all the morning—every minute! I’m sure, I don’t know what I shall do!”
Polly nodded sympathetically.
“I know. It IS awful! Mrs. White had it once—one of my Ladies’ Aiders, you know. She had rheumatic fever, too, at the same time, so she couldn’t thrash ‘round. She said ‘twould have been easier if she could have. Can you?”
“Can I—what?”
“Thrash ‘round—move, you know, so as to change your position when the music gets too hard to stand.”
Mrs. Snow stared a little.
“Why, of course I can move—anywhere—in bed,” she rejoined a little irritably.
“Well, you can be glad of that, then, anyhow, can’t you?” nodded Pollyanna. “Mrs. White couldn’t. You can’t thrash when you have rheumatic fever—though you want to something awful, Mrs. White says. She told me afterwards she reckoned she’d have gone raving crazy if it hadn’t been for Mr. White’s sister’s ears—being deaf, so.”
“Sister’s—EARS! What do you mean?”
Pollyanna laughed.
“Well, I reckon I didn’t tell it all, and I forgot you didn’t know Mrs. White. You see, Miss White was deaf—awfully deaf; and she came to visit ‘em and to help take care of Mrs. White and the house. Well, they had such an awful time making her understand ANYTHING, that after that, every time the piano commenced to play across the street, Mrs. White felt so glad she COULD hear it, that she didn’t mind so much that she DID hear it, ‘cause she couldn’t help thinking how awful ‘twould be if she was deaf and couldn’t hear anything, like her husband’s sister. You see, she was playing the game, too. I’d told her about it.”
“The—game?”
Pollyanna clapped her hands.
“There! I ‘most forgot; but I’ve thought it up, Mrs. Snow—what you can be glad about.”
“GLAD about! What do you mean?”
“Why, I told you I would. Don’t you remember? You asked me to tell you something to be glad about—glad, you know, even though you did have to lie here abed all