Miss Polly lifted her head irritably.
“Pollyanna, you ARE the most extraordinary child! You will be allowed a proper amount of playtime, of course. But, surely, it seems to me if I am willing to do my duty in seeing that you have proper care and instruction, YOU ought to be willing to do yours by seeing that that care and instruction are not ungratefully wasted[46].”
Pollyanna looked shocked.
“Oh, Aunt Polly, as if I ever could be ungrateful – to YOU! Why, I LOVE YOU – and you aren’t even a Ladies’ Aider; you’re an aunt!”
“Very well; then see that you don’t act ungrateful,” vouchsafed Miss Polly, as she turned toward the door.
She had gone halfway down the stairs when a small, unsteady voice called after her:
“Please, Aunt Polly, you didn’t tell me which of my things you wanted to – to give away.”
Aunt Polly emitted a tired sigh – a sigh that ascended straight to Pollyanna’s ears.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Pollyanna. Timothy will drive us into town at half-past one this afternoon. Not one of your garments is fit for my niece to wear. Certainly I should be very far from doing my duty by you if I should let you appear out in any one of them.”
Pollyanna sighed now – she believed she was going to hate that word – duty.
“Aunt Polly, please,” she called wistfully, “isn’t there ANY way you can be glad about all that – duty business?”
“What?” Miss Polly looked up in dazed surprise; then, suddenly, with very red cheeks, she turned and swept angrily down the stairs. “Don’t be impertinent, Pollyanna!”
In the hot little attic room Pollyanna dropped herself on to one of the straight-backed chairs. To her, existence loomed ahead one endless round of duty.
“I don’t see, really, what there was impertinent about that,” she sighed. “I was only asking her if she couldn’t tell me something to be glad about in all that duty business.”
For several minutes Pollyanna sat in silence, her rueful eyes fixed on the forlorn heap of garments on the bed. Then, slowly, she rose and began to put away the dresses.
“There just isn’t anything to be glad about, that I can see,” she said aloud; “unless – it’s to be glad when the duty’s done[47]!” Whereupon she laughed suddenly.
Chapter VII
Pollyanna and Punishments
At half-past one o’clock Timothy drove Miss Polly and her niece to the four or five principal dry goods stores, which were about half a mile from the homestead.
Fitting Pollyanna with a new wardrobe proved to be more or less of an exciting experience for all concerned. Miss Polly came out of it with the feeling of limp relaxation that one might have at finding oneself at last on solid earth after a perilous walk across the very thin crust of a volcano. The various clerks who had waited upon the pair came out of it with very red faces, and enough amusing stories of Pollyanna to keep their friends in gales of laughter the rest of the week. Pollyanna herself came out of it with radiant smiles and a heart content; for, as she expressed it to one of the clerks: “When you haven’t had anybody but missionary barrels and Ladies’ Aiders to dress you, it IS perfectly lovely to just walk right in and buy clothes that are brand-new, and that don’t have to be tucked up or let down because they don’t fit!”
The shopping expedition consumed the entire afternoon; then came supper and a delightful talk with Old Tom in the garden, and another with Nancy on the back porch, after the dishes were done, and while Aunt Polly paid a visit to a neighbor.
Old Tom told Pollyanna wonderful things of her mother, that made her very happy indeed; and Nancy told her all about the little farm six miles away at “The Corners,” where lived her own dear mother, and her equally dear brother and sisters. She promised, too, that sometime, if Miss Polly were willing, Pollyanna should be taken to see them.
“And THEY’VE got lovely names, too. You’ll like THEIR names,” sighed Nancy. “They’re ‘Algernon,’ and ‘florabelle’ and ‘Estelle.’ I – I just hate ‘Nancy’!”
“Oh, Nancy, what a dreadful thing to say! Why?”
“Because it isn’t pretty like the others. You see, I was the first baby, and mother hadn’t begun ter read so many stories with the pretty names in ’em, then.”
“But I love ‘Nancy,’ just because it’s you,” declared Pollyanna.
“Humph! Well, I guess you could love ‘Clarissa Mabelle’ just as well,” retorted Nancy, “and it would be a heap happier for me. I think THAT name’s just grand!”
Pollyanna laughed.
“Well, anyhow,” she chuckled, “you can be glad it isn’t ‘Hephzibah.’” “Hephzibah!”
“Yes. Mrs. White’s name is that. Her husband calls her ‘Hep,’ and she doesn’t like it. She says when he calls out ‘Hep – Hep!’ she feels just as if the next minute he was going to yell ‘Hurrah!’ And she doesn’t like to be hurrahed at.”
Nancy’s gloomy face relaxed into a broad smile.
“Well, if you don’t beat the Dutch![48] Say, do you know? – I sha’n’t never hear ‘Nancy’ now that I don’t think o’ that ‘Hep – Hep!’ and giggle. My, I guess I AM glad – ” She stopped short and turned amazed eyes on the little girl. “Say, Miss Pollyanna, do you mean – was you playin’ that ’ere game THEN – about my bein’ glad I wa’n’t named Hephzibah?”
Pollyanna frowned; then she laughed.
“Why, Nancy, that’s so! I WAS playing the game – but that’s one of the times I just did it without thinking, I reckon. You see, you DO, lots of times; 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[49] 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-cochère[50]. 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.
47
it’s to be glad when the duty’s done – (