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Obediently Pollyanna turned and trotted at Mrs. Carew’s side, through the huge station; but she looked up once or twice rather anxiously into the lady’s unsmiling face. At last she spoke hesitatingly.
“I expect maybe you thought – I’d be pretty,” she hazarded, in a troubled voice.
“P-pretty?” repeated Mrs. Carew.
“Yes – with curls, you know, and all that. And of course you did wonder how I DID look, just as I did you. Only I KNEW you’d be pretty and nice, on account of your sister. I had her to go by, and you didn’t have anybody. And of course I’m not pretty, on account of the freckles, and it ISN’t nice when you’ve been expecting a PRETTY little girl, to have one come like me; and —”
“Nonsense, child!” interrupted Mrs. Carew, a trifle sharply. “Come, we’ll see to your trunk now, then we’ll go home. I had hoped that my sister would come with us; but it seems she didn’t see fit – even for this one night.”
Pollyanna smiled and nodded.
“I know; but she couldn’t, probably. Somebody wanted her, I expect. Somebody was always wanting her at the Sanatorium. It’s a bother, of course, when folks do want you all the time, isn’t it? – ’cause you can’t have yourself when you want yourself, lots of times. Still, you can be kind of glad for that, for it IS nice to be wanted, isn’t it?”
There was no reply – perhaps because for the first time in her life Mrs. Carew was wondering if anywhere in the world there was any one who really wanted her – not that she WISHED to be wanted, of course, she told herself angrily, pulling herself up with a jerk, and frowning down at the child by her side.
Pollyanna did not see the frown. Pollyanna’s eyes were on the hurrying throngs about them.
“My! what a lot of people,” she was saying happily. “There’s even more of them than there was the other time I was here; but I haven’t seen anybody, yet, that I saw then, though I’ve looked for them everywhere. Of course the lady and the little baby lived in Honolulu, so probably THEY WOULDN’t be here; but there was a little girl, Susie Smith – she lived right here in Boston. Maybe you know her though. Do you know Susie Smith?”
“No, I don’t know Susie Smith,” replied Mrs. Carew, dryly.
“Don’t you? She’s awfully nice, and SHE’s pretty – black curls, you know; the kind I’m going to have when I go to Heaven. But never mind; maybe I can find her for you so you WILL know her. Oh, my! what a perfectly lovely automobile! And are we going to ride in it?” broke off Pollyanna, as they came to a pause before a handsome limousine, the door of which a liveried chauffeur was holding open.
The chauffeur tried to hide a smile – and failed. Mrs. Carew, however, answered with the weariness of one to whom “rides” are never anything but a means of locomotion from one tiresome place to another probably quite as tiresome.
“Yes, we’re going to ride in it.” Then “Home, Perkins,” she added to the deferential chauffeur.
“Oh, my, is it yours?” asked Pollyanna, detecting the unmistakable air of ownership in her hostess’s manner. “How perfectly lovely! Then you must be rich – awfully – I mean EXCEEDINGLY rich, more than the kind that just has carpets in every room and ice cream Sundays, like the Whites – one of my Ladies’ Aiders, you know. (That is, SHE was a Ladies’ Aider.) I used to think THEY were rich, but I know now that being really rich means you’ve got diamond rings and hired girls and sealskin coats, and dresses made of silk and velvet for every day, and an automobile. Have you got all those?”
“Why, y-yes, I suppose I have,” admitted Mrs. Carew, with a faint smile.
“Then you are rich, of course,” nodded Pollyanna, wisely. “My Aunt Polly has them, too, only her automobile is a horse. My! but don’t I just love to ride in these things,” exulted Pollyanna, with a happy little bounce. “You see I never did before, except the one that ran over me. They put me IN that one after they’d got me out from under it; but of course I didn’t know about it, so I couldn’t enjoy it. Since then I haven’t been in one at all. Aunt Polly doesn’t like them. Uncle Tom does, though, and he wants one. He says he’s got to have one, in his business. He’s a doctor, you know, and all the other doctors in town have got them now. I don’t know how it will come out. Aunt Polly is all stirred up over it. You see, she wants Uncle Tom to have what he wants, only she wants him to want what she wants him to want. See?”
Mrs. Carew laughed suddenly.
“Yes, my dear, I think I see,” she answered demurely, though her eyes still carried – for them – a most unusual twinkle.
“All right,” sighed Pollyanna contentedly. “I thought you would; still, it did sound sort of mixed when I said it. Oh, Aunt Polly says she wouldn’t mind having an automobile, so much, if she could have the only one there was in the world, so there wouldn’t be any one else to run into her; but – My! what a lot of houses!” broke off Pollyanna, looking about her with round eyes of wonder. “Don’t they ever stop? Still, there’d have to be a lot of them for all those folks to live in, of course, that I saw at the station, besides all these here on the streets. And of course where there ARE more folks, there are more to know. I love folks. Don’t you?”
“LOVE FOLKS!”
“Yes, just folks, I mean. Anybody – everybody.”
“Well, no, Pollyanna, I can’t say that I do,” replied Mrs. Carew, coldly, her brows contracted.
Mrs. Carew’s eyes had lost their twinkle. They were turned rather mistrustfully, indeed, on Pollyanna. To herself Mrs. Carew was saying: “Now for preachment number one, I suppose, on my duty to mix with my fellow-men, à la Sister Della!”
“Don’t you? Oh, I do,” sighed Pollyanna. “They’re all so nice and so different, you know. And down here there must be such a lot of them to be nice and different. Oh, you don’t know how glad I am so soon that I came! I knew I would be, anyway, just as soon as I found out you were YOU – that is, Miss Wetherby’s sister, I mean. I love Miss Wetherby, so I knew I should you, too; for of course you’d be alike – sisters, so – even if you weren’t twins like Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Peck – and they weren’t quite alike, anyway, on account of the wart. But I reckon you don’t know what I mean, so I’ll tell you.”
And thus it happened that Mrs. Carew, who had been steeling herself for a preachment on social ethics, found herself, much to her surprise and a little to her discomfiture, listening to the story of a wart on the nose of one Mrs. Peck, Ladies’ Aider.
By the time the story was finished the limousine had turned into Commonwealth Avenue, and Pollyanna immediately began to exclaim at the beauty of a street which had such a “lovely big long yard all the way up and down through the middle of it,” and which was all the nicer, she said, “after all those little narrow streets.”
“Only I should think every one would want to live on it,” she commented enthusiastically.
“Very likely; but that would hardly be possible,” retorted Mrs. Carew, with uplifted eyebrows.
Pollyanna, mistaking the expression on her face for one of dissatisfaction that her own home was not on the beautiful Avenue, hastened to make amends[18 - hastened to make amends – (разг.) поспешила исправиться].
“Why, no, of course not,” she agreed. “And I didn’t mean that the narrower streets weren’t just as nice,” she hurried on; “and even better, maybe, because you could be glad you didn’t have to go so far when you wanted to run across the way to borrow eggs or soda, and – Oh, but DO you live here?” she interrupted herself, as the car came to a stop before the imposing Carew doorway. “Do you live here, Mrs. Carew?”
“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 - even if it isn’t proper – (разг.) даже если это неприлично],” 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 - the policeman on the beat – (разг.) полицейский на обходе (дежурстве)], 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,
“RUTH.”
“‘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 - immediate surroundings – (уст.) ближайшие окрестности] – 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!
Pollyanna had arrived on a Monday, so it was almost a week before the first Sunday. She came downstairs that morning with a beaming countenance.
“I love Sundays,” she sighed happily.
“Do you?” Mrs. Carew’s voice had the weariness of one who loves no day.
“Yes, on account of church, you know, and Sunday school. Which do you like best, church, or Sunday school?”
“Well, really, I —” began Mrs. Carew, who seldom went to church and never went to Sunday school.
“’tis hard to tell, isn’t it?” interposed Pollyanna, with luminous but serious eyes. “But you see I like church best, on account of father. You know he was a minister, and of course he’s really up in Heaven with mother and the rest of us, but I try to imagine him down here, lots of times; and it’s easiest in church, when the minister is talking. I shut my eyes and imagine it’s father up there; and it helps lots. I’m so glad we can imagine things, aren’t you?”
“I’m not so sure of that, Pollyanna.”
“Oh, but just think how much nicer our IMAGINED things are than our really truly ones – that is, of course, yours aren’t, because your REAL ones are so nice.” Mrs. Carew angrily started to speak, but Pollyanna was hurrying on. “And of course MY real ones are ever so much nicer than they used to be. But all that time I was hurt, when my legs didn’t go, I just had to keep imagining all the time, just as hard as I could. And of course now there are lots of times when I do it – like about father, and all that. And so to-day I’m just going to imagine it’s father up there in the pulpit. What time do we go?”
“GO?”
“To church, I mean.”
“But, Pollyanna, I don’t – that is, I’d rather not —” Mrs. Carew cleared her throat and tried again to say that she was not going to church at all; that she almost never went. But with Pollyanna’s confident little face and happy eyes before her, she could not do it.
“Why, I suppose – about quarter past ten – if we walk,” she said then, almost crossly. “It’s only a little way.[22 - It’s only a little way. – Это совсем рядом.]”
Thus it happened that Mrs. Carew on that bright September morning occupied for the first time in months the Carew pew in the very fashionable and elegant church to which she had gone as a girl, and which she still supported liberally – so far as money went.
To Pollyanna that Sunday morning service was a great wonder and joy. The marvelous music of the vested choir, the opalescent rays from the jeweled windows, the impassioned voice of the preacher, and the reverent hush of the worshiping throng filled her with an ecstasy that left her for a time almost speechless. Not until they were nearly home did she fervently breathe:
“Oh, Mrs. Carew, I’ve just been thinking how glad I am we don’t have to live but just one day at a time!”
Mrs. Carew frowned and looked down sharply. Mrs. Carew was in no mood for preaching. She had just been obliged to endure it from the pulpit, she told herself angrily, and she would NOT listen to it from this chit of a child. Moreover, this “living one day at a time” theory was a particularly pet doctrine of Della’s. Was not Della always saying: “But you only have to live one minute at a time, Ruth, and any one can endure anything for one minute at a time!”
“Well?” said Mrs. Carew now, tersely.
“Yes. Only think what I’d do if I had to live yesterday and to-day and to-morrow all at once,” sighed Pollyanna. “Such a lot of perfectly lovely things, you know. But I’ve had yesterday, and now I’m living today, and I’ve got to-morrow still coming, and next Sunday, too. Honestly, Mrs. Carew, if it wasn’t Sunday now, and on this nice quiet street, I should just dance and shout and yell. I couldn’t help it. But it’s being Sunday, so, I shall have to wait till I get home and then take a hymn – the most rejoicingest hymn I can think of. What is the most rejoicingest hymn? Do you know, Mrs. Carew?”
“No, I can’t say that I do,” answered Mrs. Carew, faintly, looking very much as if she were searching for something she had lost. For a woman who expects, because things are so bad, to be told that she need stand only one day at a time, it is disarming, to say the least[23 - to say the least – (разг.) мягко говоря], to be told that, because things are so good, it is lucky she does not HAVE to stand but one day at a time!
On Monday, the next morning, Pollyanna went to school for the first time alone. She knew the way perfectly now, and it was only a short walk. Pollyanna enjoyed her school very much. It was a small private school for girls, and was quite a new experience, in its way; but Pollyanna liked new experiences.
Mrs. Carew, however, did not like new experiences, and she was having a good many of them these days. For one who is tired of everything to be in so intimate a companionship with one to whom everything is a fresh and fascinating joy must needs result in annoyance, to say the least. And Mrs. Carew was more than annoyed. She was exasperated. Yet to herself she was forced to admit that if any one asked her why she was exasperated, the only reason she could give would be “Because Pollyanna is so glad” – and even Mrs. Carew would hardly like to give an answer like that.
To Della, however, Mrs. Carew did write that the word “glad” had got on her nerves, and that sometimes she wished she might never hear it again. She still admitted that Pollyanna had not preached – that she had not even once tried to make her play the game. What the child did do, however, was invariably to take Mrs. Carew’s “gladness” as a matter of course, which, to one who HAD no gladness, was most provoking.
It was during the second week of Pollyanna’s stay that Mrs. Carew’s annoyance overflowed into irritable remonstrance. The immediate cause thereof was Pollyanna’s glowing conclusion to a story about one of her Ladies’ Aiders.
“She was playing the game, Mrs. Carew. But maybe you don’t know what the game is. I’ll tell you. It’s a lovely game.”
But Mrs. Carew held up her hand.
“Never mind, Pollyanna,” she demurred. “I know all about the game. My sister told me, and – and I must say that I – I should not care for it[24 - I should not care for it – (разг.) мне это неинтересно].”
“Why, of course not, Mrs. Carew!” exclaimed Pollyanna in quick apology. “I didn’t mean the game for you. You couldn’t play it, of course.”
“I COULDN’t play it!” ejaculated Mrs. Carew, who, though she WOULD not play this silly game, was in no mood to be told that she COULD not.
“Why, no, don’t you see?” laughed Pollyanna, gleefully. “The game is to find something in everything to be glad about; and you couldn’t even begin to hunt, for there isn’t anything about you but what you COULD be glad about. There wouldn’t BE any game to it for you! Don’t you see?”
Mrs. Carew flushed angrily. In her annoyance she said more than perhaps she meant to say.
“Well, no, Pollyanna, I can’t say that I do,” she differed coldly. “As it happens, you see, I can find nothing whatever to be – glad for.”
For a moment Pollyanna stared blankly. Then she fell back in amazement.
“Why, MRS. CAREW!” she breathed.
“Well, what is there – for me?” challenged the woman, forgetting all about, for the moment, that she was never going to allow Pollyanna to “preach.”
“Why, there’s – there’s everything,” murmured Pollyanna, still with that dazed unbelief. “There – there’s this beautiful house.”
“It’s just a place to eat and sleep – and I don’t want to eat and sleep.”
“But there are all these perfectly lovely things,” faltered Pollyanna.
“I’m tired of them.”
“And your automobile that will take you anywhere.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere.” Pollyanna quite gasped aloud.
“But think of the people and things you could see, Mrs. Carew.”
“They would not interest me, Pollyanna.”
Once again Pollyanna stared in amazement. The troubled frown on her face deepened.
