“I wish I didn’t have anything to do but that. I have to go to school. Oh, I like school; but there’s such a whole lot of things I like better. Still I’m glad I CAN go to school. I’m ’specially glad when I remember how last winter I didn’t think I could ever go again. You see, I lost my legs for a while – I mean, they didn’t go; and you know you never know how much you use things, till you don’t have ’em. And eyes, too. Did you ever think what a lot you do with eyes? I didn’t till I went to the Sanatorium. There was a lady there who had just got blind the year before. I tried to get her to play the game – finding something to be glad about, you know – but she said she couldn’t; and if I wanted to know why, I might tie up my eyes with my handkerchief for just one hour. And I did. It was awful. Did you ever try it?”
“Why, n-no, I didn’t.” A half-vexed, half-baffled expression was coming to the man’s face.
“Well, don’t. It’s awful. You can’t do anything – not anything that you want to do. But I kept it on the whole hour. Since then I’ve been so glad, sometimes – when I see something perfectly lovely like this, you know – I’ve been so glad I wanted to cry; – ’cause I COULD see it, you know. She’s playing the game now, though – that blind lady is. Miss Wetherby told me.”
“The – GAME?”
“Yes; the ‘glad game’. Didn’t I tell you? Finding something in everything to be glad about. Well, she’s found it now – about her eyes, you know. Her husband is the kind of a man that goes to help make the laws, and she had him ask for one that would help blind people, ‘specially little babies. And she went herself and talked and told those men how it felt to be blind. And they made it – that law. And they said that she did more than anybody else, even her husband, to help make it, and that they didn’t believe there would have been any law at all if it hadn’t been for her. So now she says she’s glad she lost her eyes, ’cause she’s kept so many little babies from growing up to be blind like her. So you see she’s playing it – the game. But I reckon you don’t know about the game yet, after all; so I’ll tell you. It started this way.” And Pollyanna, with her eyes on the shimmering beauty all about her, told of the little pair of crutches of long ago, which should have been a doll.
When the story was finished there was a long silence; then, a little abruptly the man got to his feet.
“Oh, are you going away NOW?” she asked in open disappointment.
“Yes, I’m going now.” He smiled down at her a little queerly.
“But you’re coming back sometime?”
He shook his head – but again he smiled.
“I hope not – and I believe not, little girl. You see, I’ve made a great discovery to-day. I thought I was down and out[28]. I thought there was no place for me anywhere – now. But I’ve just discovered that I’ve got two eyes, two arms, and two legs. Now I’m going to use them – and I’m going to MAKE somebody understand that I know how to use them!”
The next moment he was gone.
“Why, what a funny man!” mused Pollyanna. “Still, he was nice – and he was different, too,” she finished, rising to her feet and resuming her walk.
Pollyanna was now once more her usual cheerful self, and she stepped with the confident assurance of one who has no doubt. Had not the man said that this was a public park, and that she had as good a right as anybody to be there? She walked nearer to the pond and crossed the bridge to the starting-place of the little boats. For some time she watched the children happily, keeping a particularly sharp lookout for the possible black curls of Susie Smith. She would have liked to take a ride in the pretty boats, herself, but the sign said “Five cents” a trip, and she did not have any money with her. She smiled hopefully into the faces of several women, and twice she spoke tentatively. But no one spoke first to her, and those whom she addressed eyed her coldly, and made scant response.
After a time she turned her steps into still another path. Here she found a white-faced boy in a wheelchair. She would have spoken to him, but he was so absorbed in his book that she turned away after a moment’s wistful gazing. Soon then she came upon a pretty, but sad-looking young girl sitting alone, staring at nothing, very much as the man had sat. With a contented little cry Pollyanna hurried forward.
“Oh, how do you do?” she beamed. “I’m so glad I found you! I’ve been hunting ever so long for you,” she asserted, dropping herself down on the unoccupied end of the bench.
The pretty girl turned with a start, an eager look of expectancy in her eyes.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, falling back in plain disappointment. “I thought – Why, what do you mean?” she demanded aggrievedly. “I never set eyes on you before in my life.”
“No, I didn’t you, either,” smiled Pollyanna; “but I’ve been hunting for you, just the same. That is, of course I didn’t know you were going to be YOU exactly. It’s just that I wanted to find some one that looked lonesome, and that didn’t have anybody. Like me, you know. So many here to-day have got folks. See?”
“Yes, I see,” nodded the girl, falling back into her old listlessness. “But, poor little kid, it’s too bad YOU should find it out – so soon.”
“Find what out?”
“That the lonesomest place in all the world is in a crowd in a big city.”
Pollyanna frowned and pondered.
“Is it? I don’t see how it can be. I don’t see how you can be lonesome when you’ve got folks all around you. Still —” she hesitated, and the frown deepened. “I WAS lonesome this afternoon, and there WERE folks all around me; only they didn’t seem to – to think – or notice.”
The pretty girl smiled bitterly.
“That’s just it.[29] They don’t ever think – or notice, crowds don’t.”
“But some folks do. We can be glad some do,” urged Pollyanna. “Now when I —”
“Oh, yes, some do,” interrupted the other. As she spoke she shivered and looked fearfully down the path beyond Pollyanna. “Some notice – too much.”
Pollyanna shrank back in dismay. Repeated rebuffs that afternoon had given her a new sensitiveness.
“Do you mean – me?” she stammered. “That you wished I hadn’t – noticed – you?”
“No, no, kiddie! I meant – some one quite different from you. Some one that hadn’t ought to notice. I was glad to have you speak, only – I thought at first it was some one from home.”
“Oh, then you don’t live here, either, any more than I do – I mean, for keeps[30].”
“Oh, yes, I live here now,” sighed the girl; “that is, if you can call it living – what I do.”
“What do you do?” asked Pollyanna interestedly.
“Do? I’ll tell you what I do,” cried the other, with sudden bitterness. “From morning till night I sell fluffy laces and perky bows to girls that laugh and talk and KNOW each other. Then I go home to a little back room up three flights just big enough to hold a lumpy cot-bed, a washstand with a nicked pitcher, one rickety chair, and me. It’s like a furnace in the summer and an ice box in the winter; but it’s all the place I’ve got, and I’m supposed to stay in it – when I ain’t workin’. But I’ve come out to-day. I ain’t goin’ to stay in that room, and I ain’t goin’ to go to any old library to read, neither. It’s our last half-holiday this year – and an extra one, at that; and I’m going to have a good time – for once. I’m just as young, and I like to laugh and joke just as well as them girls I sell bows to all day. Well, to-day I’m going to laugh and joke.”
Pollyanna smiled and nodded her approval.
“I’m glad you feel that way. I do, too. It’s a lot more fun – to be happy, isn’t it? Besides, the Bible tells us to; – rejoice and be glad, I mean. It tells us to eight hundred times. Probably you know about ’em, though – the rejoicing texts.”