Pollyanna by Eleanor Hodgman Porter (free reads .txt) 📖

you get so used to it—looking for something to be glad about, you know. And most generally there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.”

“Well, m-maybe,” granted Nancy, with open doubt.

At half-past eight Pollyanna went up to bed. The screens had not yet come, and the close little room was like an oven. With longing eyes Pollyanna looked at the two fast-closed windows—but she did not raise them. She undressed, folded her clothes neatly, said her prayers, blew out her candle and climbed into bed.

Just how long she lay in sleepless misery, tossing from side to side of the hot little cot, she did not know; but it seemed to her that it must have been hours before she finally slipped out of bed, felt her way across the room and opened her door.

Out in the main attic all was velvet blackness save where the moon flung a path of silver half-way across the floor from the east dormer window. With a resolute ignoring of that fearsome darkness to the right and to the left, Pollyanna drew a quick breath and pattered straight into that silvery path, and on to the window.

She had hoped, vaguely, that this window might have a screen, but it did not. Outside, however, there was a wide world of fairy-like beauty, and there was, too, she knew, fresh, sweet air that would feel so good to hot cheeks and hands!

As she stepped nearer and peered longingly out, she saw something else: she saw, only a little way below the window, the wide, flat tin roof of Miss Polly’s sun parlor built over the porte-cochere. The sight filled her with longing. If only, now, she were out there!

Fearfully she looked behind her. Back there, somewhere, were her hot little room and her still hotter bed; but between her and them lay a horrid desert of blackness across which one must feel one’s way with outstretched, shrinking arms; while before her, out on the sun-parlor roof, were the moonlight and the cool, sweet night air.

If only her bed were out there! And folks did sleep out of doors. Joel Hartley at home, who was so sick with the consumption, HAD to sleep out of doors.

Suddenly Pollyanna remembered that she had seen near this attic window a row of long white bags hanging from nails. Nancy had said that they contained the winter clothing, put away for the summer. A little fearfully now, Pollyanna felt her way to these bags, selected a nice fat soft one (it contained Miss Polly’s sealskin coat) for a bed; and a thinner one to be doubled up for a pillow, and still another (which was so thin it seemed almost empty) for a covering. Thus equipped, Pollyanna in high glee pattered to the moonlit window again, raised the sash, stuffed her burden through to the roof below, then let herself down after it, closing the window carefully behind her—Pollyanna had not forgotten those flies with the marvellous feet that carried things.

How deliciously cool it was! Pollyanna quite danced up and down with delight, drawing in long, full breaths of the refreshing air. The tin roof under her feet crackled with little resounding snaps that Pollyanna rather liked. She walked, indeed, two or three times back and forth from end to end—it gave her such a pleasant sensation of airy space after her hot little room; and the roof was so broad and flat that she had no fear of falling off. Finally, with a sigh of content, she curled herself up on the sealskin-coat mattress, arranged one bag for a pillow and the other for a covering, and settled herself to sleep.

“I’m so glad now that the screens didn’t come,” she murmured, blinking up at the stars; “else I couldn’t have had this!”

Down-stairs in Miss Polly’s room next the sun parlor, Miss Polly herself was hurrying into dressing gown and slippers, her face white and frightened. A minute before she had been telephoning in a shaking voice to Timothy:

“Come up quick!—you and your father. Bring lanterns. Somebody is on the roof of the sun parlor. He must have climbed up the rose-trellis or somewhere, and of course he can get right into the house through the east window in the attic. I have locked the attic door down here—but hurry, quick!”

Some time later, Pollyanna, just dropping off to sleep, was startled by a lantern flash, and a trio of amazed ejaculations. She opened her eyes to find Timothy at the top of a ladder near her, Old Tom just getting through the window, and her aunt peering out at her from behind him.

“Pollyanna, what does this mean?” cried Aunt Polly then.

Pollyanna blinked sleepy eyes and sat up.

“Why, Mr. Tom—Aunt Polly!” she stammered. “Don’t look so scared! It isn’t that I’ve got the consumption, you know, like Joel Hartley. It’s only that I was so hot—in there. But I shut the window, Aunt Polly, so the flies couldn’t carry those germ-things in.”

Timothy disappeared suddenly down the ladder. Old Tom, with almost equal precipitation, handed his lantern to Miss Polly, and followed his son. Miss Polly bit her lip hard—until the men were gone; then she said sternly:

“Pollyanna, hand those things to me at once and come in here. Of all the extraordinary children!” she ejaculated a little later, as, with Pollyanna by her side, and the lantern in her hand, she turned back into the attic.

To Pollyanna the air was all the more stifling after that cool breath of the out of doors; but she did not complain. She only drew a long quivering sigh.

At the top of the stairs Miss Polly jerked out crisply:

“For the rest of the night, Pollyanna, you are to sleep in my bed with me. The screens will be here to-morrow, but until then I consider it my duty to keep you where I know where you are.”

Pollyanna drew in her breath.

“With you?—in your bed?” she cried rapturously. “Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, how perfectly lovely of you! And when I’ve so wanted to sleep with some one sometime—some one that belonged to me, you know; not a Ladies’ Aider. I’ve HAD them. My! I reckon I am glad now those screens didn’t come! Wouldn’t you be?”

There was no reply. Miss Polly was stalking on ahead. Miss Polly, to tell the truth, was feeling curiously helpless. For the third time since Pollyanna’s arrival, Miss Polly was punishing Pollyanna—and for the third time she was being confronted with the amazing fact that her punishment was being taken as a special reward of merit. No wonder Miss Polly was feeling curiously helpless.

CHAPTER VIII. POLLYANNA PAYS A VISIT

It was not long before life at the Harrington homestead settled into something like order—though not exactly the order that Miss Polly had at first prescribed. Pollyanna sewed, practised, read aloud, and studied cooking in the kitchen, it is true; but she did not give to any of these things quite so much time as had first been planned. She had more time, also, to “just live,” as she expressed it, for almost all of every afternoon from two until six o’clock was hers to do with as she liked—provided she did not “like” to do certain things already prohibited by Aunt Polly.

It is a question, perhaps, whether all this leisure time was given to the child as a relief to Pollyanna from work—or as a relief to Aunt Polly from Pollyanna. Certainly, as those first July days passed, Miss Polly found occasion many times to ejaculate “What an extraordinary child!” and certainly the reading and sewing lessons found her at their conclusion each day somewhat dazed and wholly exhausted.

Nancy, in the kitchen, fared better. She was not dazed nor exhausted. Wednesdays and Saturdays came to be, indeed, red-letter days to her.

There were no children in the immediate neighborhood of the Harrington homestead for Pollyanna to play with. The house itself was on the outskirts of the village, and though there were other houses not far away, they did not chance to contain any boys or girls near Pollyanna’s age. This, however, did not seem to disturb Pollyanna in the least.

“Oh, no, I don’t mind it at all,” she explained to Nancy. “I’m happy just to walk around and see the streets and the houses and watch the people. I just love people. Don’t you, Nancy?”

“Well, I can’t say I do—all of ‘em,” retorted Nancy, tersely.

Almost every pleasant afternoon found Pollyanna begging for “an errand to run,” so that she might be off for a walk in one direction or another; and it was on these walks that frequently she met the Man. To herself Pollyanna always called him “the Man,” no matter if she met a dozen other men the same day.

The Man often wore a long black coat and a high silk hat—two things that the “just men” never wore. His face was clean shaven and rather pale, and his hair, showing below his hat, was somewhat gray. He walked erect, and rather rapidly, and he was always alone, which made Pollyanna vaguely sorry for him. Perhaps it was because of this that she one day spoke to him.

“How do you do, sir? Isn’t this a nice day?” she called cheerily, as she approached him.

The man threw a hurried glance about him, then stopped uncertainly.

“Did you speak—to me?” he asked in a sharp voice.

“Yes, sir,” beamed Pollyanna. “I say, it’s a nice day, isn’t it?”

“Eh? Oh! Humph!” he grunted; and strode on again.

Pollyanna laughed. He was such a funny man, she thought.

The next day she saw him again.

” ‘Tisn’t quite so nice as yesterday, but it’s pretty nice,” she called out cheerfully.

“Eh? Oh! Humph!” grunted the man as before; and once again Pollyanna laughed happily.

When for the third time Pollyanna accosted him in much the same manner, the man stopped abruptly.

“See here, child, who are you, and why are you speaking to me every day?”

“I’m Pollyanna Whittier, and I thought you looked lonesome. I’m so glad you stopped. Now we’re introduced—only I don’t know your name yet.”

“Well, of all the—” The man did not finish his sentence, but strode on faster than ever.

Pollyanna looked after him with a disappointed droop to her usually smiling lips.

“Maybe he didn’t understand—but that was only half an introduction. I don’t know HIS name, yet,” she murmured, as she proceeded on her way.

Pollyanna was carrying calf’s-foot jelly to Mrs. Snow to-day. Miss Polly Harrington always sent something to Mrs. Snow once a week. She said she thought that it was her duty, inasmuch as Mrs. Snow was poor, sick, and a member of her church—it was the duty of all the church members to look out for her, of course. Miss Polly did her duty by Mrs. Snow usually on Thursday afternoons—not personally, but through Nancy. To-day Pollyanna had begged the privilege, and Nancy had promptly given it to her in accordance with Miss Polly’s orders.

“And it’s glad that I am ter get rid of it,” Nancy had declared in private afterwards to Pollyanna; “though it’s a shame ter be tuckin’ the job off on ter you, poor lamb, so it is, it is!”

“But I’d love to do it, Nancy.”

“Well, you won’t—after you’ve done it once,” predicted Nancy, sourly.

“Why not?”

“Because nobody does. If folks wa’n’t sorry for her there wouldn’t a soul go near her from mornin’ till night, she’s that cantankerous. All is, I pity her daughter what HAS ter take care of her.”

“But, why, Nancy?”

Nancy shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, in plain