Pollyanna Grows Up Eleanor H. Porter (booksvooks .TXT) đ
- Author: Eleanor H. Porter
Book online «Pollyanna Grows Up Eleanor H. Porter (booksvooks .TXT) đ». Author Eleanor H. Porter
âYes, I asked you,â said Mrs. Carew in a half-stifled voice, as she turned away.
Not only from Sadie Dean, however, was Mrs. Carew learning things never learned before, but from Jamie, also.
Jamie was there a great deal. Pollyanna liked to have him there, and he liked to be there. At first, to be sure, he had hesitated; but very soon he had quieted his doubts and yielded to his longings by telling himself (and Pollyanna) that, after all, visiting was not âstaying for keeps.â
Mrs. Carew often found the boy and Pollyanna contentedly settled on the library window-seat, with the empty wheel chair close by. Sometimes they were poring over a book. (She heard Jamie tell Pollyanna one day that he didnât think heâd mind so very much being lame if he had so many books as Mrs. Carew, and that he guessed heâd be so happy heâd fly clean away if he had both books and legs.) Sometimes the boy was telling stories, and Pollyanna was listening, wide-eyed and absorbed.
Mrs. Carew wondered at Pollyannaâs interestâ âuntil one day she herself stopped and listened. After that she wondered no longerâ âbut she listened a good deal longer. Crude and incorrect as was much of the boyâs language, it was always wonderfully vivid and picturesque, so that Mrs. Carew found herself, hand in hand with Pollyanna, trailing down the Golden Ages at the beck of a glowing-eyed boy.
Dimly Mrs. Carew was beginning to realize, too, something of what it must mean, to be in spirit and ambition the center of brave deeds and wonderful adventures, while in reality one was only a crippled boy in a wheel chair. But what Mrs. Carew did not realize was the part this crippled boy was beginning to play in her own life. She did not realize how much a matter of course his presence was becoming, nor how interested she now was in finding something new âfor Jamie to see.â Neither did she realize how day by day he was coming to seem to her more and more the lost Jamie, her dead sisterâs child.
As February, March, and April passed, however, and May came, bringing with it the near approach of the date set for Pollyannaâs home-going, Mrs. Carew did suddenly awake to the knowledge of what that home-going was to mean to her.
She was amazed and appalled. Up to now she had, in belief, looked forward with pleasure to the departure of Pollyanna. She had said that then once again the house would be quiet, with the glaring sun shut out. Once again she would be at peace, and able to hide herself away from the annoying, tiresome world. Once again she would be free to summon to her aching consciousness all those dear memories of the lost little lad who had so long ago stepped into that vast unknown and closed the door behind him. All this she had believed would be the case when Pollyanna should go home.
But now that Pollyanna was really going home, the picture was far different. The âquiet house with the sun shut outâ had become one that promised to be âgloomy and unbearable.â The longed-for âpeaceâ would be âwretched lonelinessâ; and as for her being able to âhide herself away from the annoying, tiresome world,â and âfree to summon to her aching consciousness all those dear memories of that lost little ladââ âjust as if anything could blot out those other aching memories of the new Jamie (who yet might be the old Jamie) with his pitiful, pleading eyes!
Full well now Mrs. Carew knew that without Pollyanna the house would be empty; but that without the lad, Jamie, it would be worse than that. To her pride this knowledge was not pleasing. To her heart it was tortureâ âsince the boy had twice said that he would not come. For a time, during those last few days of Pollyannaâs stay, the struggle was a bitter one, though pride always kept the ascendancy. Then, on what Mrs. Carew knew would be Jamieâs last visit, her heart triumphed, and once more she asked Jamie to come and be to her the Jamie that was lost.
What she said she never could remember afterwards; but what the boy said, she never forgot. After all, it was compassed in six short words.
For what seemed a long, long minute his eyes had searched her face; then to his own had come a transfiguring light, as he breathed:
âOh, yes! Why, youâ âcare, now!â
XIV Jimmy and the Green-Eyed MonsterThis time Beldingsville did not literally welcome Pollyanna home with brass bands and buntingâ âperhaps because the hour of her expected arrival was known to but few of the townspeople. But there certainly was no lack of joyful greetings on the part of everybody from the moment she stepped from the railway train with her Aunt Polly and Dr. Chilton. Nor did Pollyanna lose any time in starting on a round of flyaway minute calls on all her old friends. Indeed, for the next few days, according to Nancy, âThere wasnât no putting of your finger on her anywheres, for by the time youâd got your finger down she waânât there.â
And always, everywhere she went, Pollyanna met the question: âWell, how did you like Boston?â Perhaps to no one did she answer this more fully than she did to Mr. Pendleton. As was usually the case when this question was put to her, she began her reply with a troubled frown.
âOh, I liked itâ âI just loved itâ âsome of it.â
âBut not all of it?â smiled Mr. Pendleton.
âNo. Thereâs parts of itâ âOh, I was glad to be there,â she explained hastily. âI had a perfectly lovely time, and lots of things were so queer
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