“Why, yes, of course I live here,” returned the lady, with just a touch of irritation.
“Oh, how glad, GLAD you must be to live in such a perfectly lovely place!” exulted the little girl, springing to the sidewalk and looking eagerly about her. “Aren’t you glad?”
Mrs. Carew did not reply. With unsmiling lips and frowning brow she was stepping from the limousine.
For the second time in five minutes, Pollyanna hastened to make amends.
“Of course I don’t mean the kind of glad that’s sinfully proud,” she explained, searching Mrs. Carew’s face with anxious eyes. “Maybe you thought I did, same as Aunt Polly used to, sometimes. I don’t mean the kind that’s glad because you’ve got something somebody else can’t have; but the kind that just – just makes you want to shout and yell and bang doors, you know, even if it isn’t proper[19],” she finished, dancing up and down on her toes.
The chauffeur turned his back precipitately, and busied himself with the car. Mrs. Carew, still with unsmiling lips and frowning brow led the way up the broad stone steps.
“Come, Pollyanna,” was all she said, crisply.
It was five days later that Della Wetherby received the letter from her sister, and very eagerly she tore it open. It was the first that had come since Pollyanna’s arrival in Boston.
“My dear Sister,” Mrs. Carew had written. “For pity’s sake, Della, why didn’t you give me some sort of an idea what to expect from this child you have insisted upon my taking? I’m nearly wild – and I simply can’t send her away. I’ve tried to three times, but every time, before I get the words out of my mouth, she stops them by telling me what a perfectly lovely time she is having, and how glad she is to be here, and how good I am to let her live with me while her Aunt Polly has gone to Germany. Now how, pray, in the face of that, can I turn around and say ‘Well, won’t you please go home; I don’t want you’? And the absurd part of it is, I don’t believe it has ever entered her head that I don’t WANT her here; and I can’t seem to make it enter her head, either.
“Of course if she begins to preach, and to tell me to count my blessings, I SHALL send her away. You know I told you, to begin with, that I wouldn’t permit that. And I won’t. Two or three times I have thought she was going to (preach, I mean), but so far she has always ended up with some ridiculous story about those Ladies’ Aiders of hers; so the sermon gets sidetracked – luckily for her, if she wants to stay.
“But, really, Della, she is impossible. Listen. In the first place she is wild with delight over the house. The very first day she got here she begged me to open every room; and she was not satisfied until every shade in the house was up, so that she might ‘see all the perfectly lovely things,’ which, she declared, were even nicer than Mr. John Pendleton’s – whoever he may be, somebody in Beldingsville, I believe. Anyhow, he isn’t a Ladies’ Aider. I’ve found out that much.
“Then, as if it wasn’t enough to keep me running from room to room (as if I were the guide on a ‘personally conducted’), what did she do but discover a white satin evening gown that I hadn’t worn for years, and beseech me to put it on. And I did put it on – why, I can’t imagine, only that I found myself utterly helpless in her hands.
“But that was only the beginning. She begged then to see everything that I had, and she was so perfectly funny in her stories of the missionary barrels, which she used to ‘dress out of,’ that I had to laugh – though I almost cried, too, to think of the wretched things that poor child had to wear. Of course gowns led to jewels, and she made such a fuss over my two or three rings that I foolishly opened the safe, just to see her eyes pop out. And, Della, I thought that child would go crazy. She put on to me every ring, brooch, bracelet, and necklace that I owned, and insisted on fastening both diamond tiaras in my hair (when she found out what they were), until there I sat, hung with pearls and diamonds and emeralds, and feeling like a heathen goddess in a Hindu temple, especially when that preposterous child began to dance round and round me, clapping her hands and chanting, ‘Oh, how perfectly lovely, how perfectly lovely! How I would love to hang you on a string in the window – you’d make such a beautiful prism!’
“I was just going to ask her what on earth she meant by that when down she dropped in the middle of the floor and began to cry. And what do you suppose she was crying for? Because she was so glad she’d got eyes that could see! Now what do you think of that?
“Of course this isn’t all. It’s only the beginning. Pollyanna has been here four days, and she’s filled every one of them full. She already numbers among her friends the ash-man, the policeman on the beat[20], and the paper boy, to say nothing of every servant in my employ. They seem actually bewitched with her, every one of them. But please do not think I am, for I’m not. I would send the child back to you at once if I didn’t feel obliged to fulfil my promise to keep her this winter. As for her making me forget Jamie and my great sorrow – that is impossible. She only makes me feel my loss all the more keenly – because I have her instead of him. But, as I said, I shall keep her – until she begins to preach. Then back she goes to you. But she hasn’t preached yet.
“Lovingly but distractedly yours,
“‘Hasn’t preached yet,’ indeed!” chuckled Della Wetherby to herself, folding up the closely-written sheets of her sister’s letter. “Oh, Ruth, Ruth! and yet you admit that you’ve opened every room, raised every shade, decked yourself in satin and jewels – and Pollyanna hasn’t been there a week yet. But she hasn’t preached – oh, no, she hasn’t preached!”
Chapter IV
The Game and MRS. Carew
Boston, to Pollyanna, was a new experience, and certainly Pollyanna, to Boston – such part of it as was privileged to know her – was very much of a new experience.
Pollyanna said she liked Boston, but that she did wish it was not quite so big.
“You see,” she explained earnestly to Mrs. Carew, the day following her arrival, “I want to see and know it ALL, and I can’t. It’s just like Aunt Polly’s company dinners; there’s so much to eat – I mean, to see – that you don’t eat – I mean, see – anything, because you’re always trying to decide what to eat – I mean, to see.
“Of course you can be glad there IS such a lot,” resumed Pollyanna, after taking breath, “‘cause a whole lot of anything is nice – that is, GOOD things; not such things as medicine and funerals, of course! – but at the same time I couldn’t used to help wishing Aunt Polly’s company dinners could be spread out a little over the days when there wasn’t any cake and pie; and I feel the same way about Boston. I wish I could take part of it home with me up to Beldingsville so I’d have SOMETHING new next summer. But of course I can’t. Cities aren’t like frosted cake – and, anyhow, even the cake didn’t keep very well. I tried it, and it dried up, ’specially the frosting. I reckon the time to take frosting and good times is while they are going; so I want to see all I can now while I’m here.”
Pollyanna, unlike the people who think that to see the world one must begin at the most distant point, began her “seeing Boston” by a thorough exploration of her immediate surroundings[21] – the beautiful Commonwealth Avenue residence which was now her home. This, with her school work, fully occupied her time and attention for some days.
There was so much to see, and so much to learn; and everything was so marvelous and so beautiful, from the tiny buttons in the wall that flooded the rooms with light, to the great silent ballroom hung with mirrors and pictures. There were so many delightful people to know, too, for besides Mrs. Carew herself there were Mary, who dusted the drawing-rooms, answered the bell, and accompanied Pollyanna to and from school each day; Bridget, who lived in the kitchen and cooked; Jennie, who waited at table, and Perkins who drove the automobile. And they were all so delightful – yet so different!