Pollyanna Grows Up - Eleanor H. Porter (read an ebook week .TXT) 📗

These were father’s. Here, you little rascal⁠—quit that!” he broke off in laughing reproof as a bushy-tailed squirrel leaped to his lap and began to nose in his pockets. “Gorry, guess we’d better give them their dinner or they’ll be tryin’ to eat us,” chuckled the boy. “That’s Sir Lancelot. He’s always first, you know.”

From somewhere the boy produced a small pasteboard box which he opened guardedly, mindful of the numberless bright little eyes that were watching every move. All about him now sounded the whir and flutter of wings, the cooing of doves, the saucy twitter of the sparrows. Sir Lancelot, alert and eager, occupied one arm of the wheel chair. Another bushy-tailed little fellow, less venturesome, sat back on his haunches five feet away. A third squirrel chattered noisily on a neighboring tree-branch.

From the box the boy took a few nuts, a small roll, and a doughnut. At the latter he looked longingly, hesitatingly.

“Did you⁠—bring anything?” he asked then.

“Lots⁠—in here,” nodded Pollyanna, tapping the paper bag she carried.

“Oh, then perhaps I will eat it today,” sighed the boy, dropping the doughnut back into the box with an air of relief.

Pollyanna, on whom the significance of this action was quite lost, thrust her fingers into her own bag, and the banquet was on.

It was a wonderful hour. To Pollyanna it was, in a way, the most wonderful hour she had ever spent, for she had found someone who could talk faster and longer than she could. This strange youth seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of marvelous stories of brave knights and fair ladies, of tournaments and battles. Moreover, so vividly did he draw his pictures that Pollyanna saw with her own eyes the deeds of valor, the knights in armor, and the fair ladies with their jeweled gowns and tresses, even though she was really looking at a flock of fluttering doves and sparrows and a group of frisking squirrels on a wide sweep of sunlit grass.

The Ladies’ Aiders were forgotten. Even the glad game was not thought of. Pollyanna, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes was trailing down the golden ages led by a romance-fed boy who⁠—though she did not know it⁠—was trying to crowd into this one short hour of congenial companionship countless dreary days of loneliness and longing.

Not until the noon bells sent Pollyanna hurrying homeward did she remember that she did not even yet know the boy’s name.

“I only know it isn’t ‘Sir James,’ ” she sighed to herself, frowning with vexation. “But never mind. I can ask him tomorrow.”

VIII Jamie

Pollyanna did not see the boy “tomorrow.” It rained, and she could not go to the Garden at all. It rained the next day, too. Even on the third day she did not see him, for, though the sun came out bright and warm, and though she went very early in the afternoon to the Garden and waited long, he did not come at all. But on the fourth day he was there in his old place, and Pollyanna hastened forward with a joyous greeting.

“Oh, I’m so glad, glad to see you! But where’ve you been? You weren’t here yesterday at all.”

“I couldn’t. The pain wouldn’t let me come yesterday,” explained the lad, who was looking very white.

“The pain! Oh, does it⁠—ache?” stammered Pollyanna, all sympathy at once.

“Oh, yes, always,” nodded the boy, with a cheerfully matter-of-fact air. “Most generally I can stand it and come here just the same, except when it gets too bad, same as ’twas yesterday. Then I can’t.”

“But how can you stand it⁠—to have it ache⁠—always?” gasped Pollyanna.

“Why, I have to,” answered the boy, opening his eyes a little wider. “Things that are so are so, and they can’t be any other way. So what’s the use thinking how they might be? Besides, the harder it aches one day, the nicer ’tis to have it letup the next.”

“I know! That’s like the ga⁠—” began Pollyanna; but the boy interrupted her.

“Did you bring a lot this time?” he asked anxiously. “Oh, I hope you did! You see I couldn’t bring them any today. Jerry couldn’t spare even a penny for peanuts this morning and there wasn’t really enough stuff in the box for me this noon.”

Pollyanna looked shocked.

“You mean⁠—that you didn’t have enough to eat⁠—yourself?⁠—for your luncheon?”

“Sure!” smiled the boy. “But don’t worry. Tisn’t the first time⁠—and ’twon’t be the last. I’m used to it. Hi, there! here comes Sir Lancelot.”

Pollyanna, however, was not thinking of squirrels.

“And wasn’t there any more at home?”

“Oh, no, there’s never any left at home,” laughed the boy. “You see, mumsey works out⁠—stairs and washings⁠—so she gets some of her feed in them places, and Jerry picks his up where he can, except nights and mornings; he gets it with us then⁠—if we’ve got any.”

Pollyanna looked still more shocked.

“But what do you do when you don’t have anything to eat?”

“Go hungry, of course.”

“But I never heard of anybody who didn’t have anything to eat,” gasped Pollyanna. “Of course father and I were poor, and we had to eat beans and fish balls when we wanted turkey. But we had somethiing. Why don’t you tell folks⁠—all these folks everywhere, that live in these houses?”

“What’s the use?”

“Why, they’d give you something, of course!”

The boy laughed once more, this time a little queerly.

“Guess again, kid. You’ve got another one coming. Nobody I know is dishin’ out roast beef and frosted cakes for the askin’. Besides, if you didn’t go hungry once in a while, you wouldn’t know how good ’taters and milk can taste; and you wouldn’t have so much to put in your Jolly Book.”

“Your what?”

The boy gave an embarrassed laugh and grew suddenly red.

“Forget it! I didn’t think, for a minute, but you was mumsey or Jerry.”

“But what is your Jolly Book?” pleaded Pollyanna. “Please tell me. Are there knights and lords and ladies in that?”

The boy shook his head. His eyes lost their laughter and grew dark and fathomless.

“No; I