“Why, how extraordinary!” murmured Mrs. Carew, still not entirely comprehending.
“You’d think so – if you could see the results of that game in the Sanatorium,” nodded Della; “and Dr. Ames says he hears she’s revolutionized the whole town where she came from, just the same way. He knows Dr. Chilton very well – the man that married Pollyanna’s aunt. And, by the way, I believe that marriage was one of her ministrations. She patched up an old lovers’ quarrel between them.
“You see, two years ago, or more, Pollyanna’s father died, and the little girl was sent East to this aunt. In October she was hurt by an automobile, and was told she could never walk again. In April Dr. Chilton sent her to the Sanatorium, and she was there till last March – almost a year. She went home practically cured. You should have seen the child! There was just one cloud to mar her happiness: that she couldn’t WALK all the way there. As near as I can gather, the whole town turned out to meet her with brass bands and banners.
“But you can’t TELL about Pollyanna. One has to SEE her. And that’s why I say I wish you could have a dose of Pollyanna. It would do you a world of good.”
Mrs. Carew lifted her chin a little.
“Really, indeed, I must say I beg to differ with you[6],” she returned coldly. “I don’t care to be ‘revolutionized,’ and I have no lovers’ quarrel to be patched up; and if there is ANYTHING that would be insufferable to me, it would be a little Miss Prim with a long face preaching to me how much I had to be thankful for. I never could bear —” But a ringing laugh interrupted her.
“Oh, Ruth, Ruth,” choked her sister, gleefully. “Miss Prim, indeed – POLLYANNA! Oh, oh, if only you could see that child now! But there, I might have known. I SAID one couldn’t TELL about Pollyanna. And of course you won’t be apt to see her. But – Miss Prim, indeed!” And off she went into another gale of laughter. Almost at once, however, she sobered and gazed at her sister with the old troubled look in her eyes.
“Seriously, dear, can’t anything be done?” she pleaded. “You ought not to waste your life like this. Won’t you try to get out a little more, and – meet people?”
“Why should I, when I don’t want to? I’m tired of – people. You know society always bored me.”
“Then why not try some sort of work – charity?”
Mrs. Carew gave an impatient gesture.
“Della, dear, we’ve been all over this before. I do give money – lots of it, and that’s enough. In fact, I’m not sure but it’s too much. I don’t believe in pauperizing people.”
“But if you’d give a little of yourself, dear,” ventured Della, gently. “If you could only get interested in something outside of your own life, it would help so much; and —”
“Now, Della, dear,” interrupted the elder sister, restively, “I love you, and I love to have you come here; but I simply cannot endure being preached to[7]. It’s all very well for you to turn yourself into an angel of mercy and give cups of cold water, and bandage up broken heads, and all that. Perhaps YOU can forget Jamie that way; but I couldn’t. It would only make me think of him all the more, wondering if HE had any one to give him water and bandage up his head. Besides, the whole thing would be very distasteful to me – mixing with all sorts and kinds of people like that.”
“Did you ever try it?”
“Why, no, of course not!” Mrs. Carew’s voice was scornfully indignant.
“Then how can you know – till you do try?” asked the young nurse, rising to her feet a little wearily. “But I must go, dear. I’m to meet the girls at the South Station. Our train goes at twelve-thirty. I’m sorry if I’ve made you cross with me,” she finished, as she kissed her sister good-by.
“I’m not cross with you, Della,” sighed Mrs. Carew; “but if you only would understand!”
One minute later Della Wetherby made her way through the silent, gloomy halls, and out to the street. Face, step, and manner were very different from what they had been when she tripped up the steps less than half an hour before. All the alertness, the springiness, the joy of living were gone. For half a block she listlessly dragged one foot after the other. Then, suddenly, she threw back her head and drew a long breath.
“One week in that house would kill me,” she shuddered. “I don’t believe even Pollyanna herself could so much as make a dent in the gloom! And the only thing she could be glad for there would be that she didn’t have to stay.”
That this avowed disbelief in Pollyanna’s ability to bring about a change for the better in Mrs. Carew’s home was not Della Wetherby’s real opinion, however, was quickly proved; for no sooner had the nurse reached the Sanatorium than she learned something that sent her flying back over the fifty-mile journey to Boston the very next day.
So exactly as before did she find circumstances at her sister’s home that it seemed almost as if Mrs. Carew had not moved since she left her.
“Ruth,” she burst out eagerly, after answering her sister’s surprised greeting, “I just HAD to come, and you must, this once, yield to me and let me have my way[8]. Listen! You can have that little Pollyanna here, I think, if you will.”
“But I won’t,” returned Mrs. Carew, with chilly promptness.
Della Wetherby did not seem to have heard. She plunged on excitedly.
“When I got back yesterday I found that Dr. Ames had had a letter from Dr. Chilton, the one who married Pollyanna’s aunt, you know. Well, it seems in it he said he was going to Germany for the winter for a special course, and was going to take his wife with him, if he could persuade her that Pollyanna would be all right in some boarding school here meantime. But Mrs. Chilton didn’t want to leave Pollyanna in just a school, and so he was afraid she wouldn’t go. And now, Ruth, there’s our chance. I want YOU to take Pollyanna this winter, and let her go to some school around here.”
“What an absurd idea, Della! As if I wanted a child here to bother with!”
“She won’t bother a bit. She must be nearly or quite thirteen by this time, and she’s the most capable little thing you ever saw.”
“I don’t like ‘capable’ children,” retorted Mrs. Carew perversely – but she laughed; and because she did laugh, her sister took sudden courage and redoubled her efforts.
Perhaps it was the suddenness of the appeal, or the novelty of it. Perhaps it was because the story of Pollyanna had somehow touched Ruth Carew’s heart. Perhaps it was only her unwillingness to refuse her sister’s impassioned plea. Whatever it was that finally turned the scale[9], when Della Wetherby took her hurried leave half an hour later, she carried with her Ruth Carew’s promise to receive Pollyanna into her home.
“But just remember,” Mrs. Carew warned her at parting, “just remember that the minute that child begins to preach to me and to tell me to count my mercies, back she goes to you, and you may do what you please with her. I sha’n’t keep her!”
“I’ll remember – but I’m not worrying any,” nodded the younger woman, in farewell. To herself she whispered, as she hurried away from the house: “Half my job is done. Now for the other half – to get Pollyanna to come. But she’s just got to come. I’ll write that letter so they can’t help letting her come!”
Chapter II
Some Old Friends
In Beldingsville that August day, Mrs. Chilton waited until Pollyanna had gone to bed before she spoke to her husband about the letter that had come in the morning mail. For that