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

hurt?” he choked huskily, flinging out both his hands. “Don’t you suppose it hurts to see a thing like that and not be able to do anything? To be tied, helpless, to a pair of sticks? I tell you there’s no hurt in all the world to equal it!”

“But⁠—but⁠—Jamie,” faltered Pollyanna.

“Don’t!” interrupted the cripple, almost harshly. He had struggled to his feet now. “Don’t say⁠—anything. I didn’t mean to make a scene⁠—like this,” he finished brokenly, as he turned and swung back along the narrow path that led to the camp.

For a minute, as if transfixed, the two behind him watched him go.

“Well, by⁠—Jove!” breathed Jimmy, then, in a voice that shook a little, “That was⁠—tough on him!”

“And I didn’t think, and praised you, right before him,” half-sobbed Pollyanna. “And his hands⁠—did you see them? They were⁠—bleeding where the nails had cut right into the flesh,” she finished, as she turned and stumbled blindly up the path.

“But, Pollyanna, w-where are you going?” cried Jimmy.

“I’m going to Jamie, of course! Do you think I’d leave him like that? Come, we must get him to come back.”

And Jimmy, with a sigh that was not all for Jamie, went.

XXIV Jimmy Wakes Up

Outwardly the camping trip was pronounced a great success; but inwardly⁠—

Pollyanna wondered sometimes if it were all herself, or if there really were a peculiar, indefinable constraint in everybody with everybody else. Certainly she felt it, and she thought she saw evidences that the others felt it, too. As for the cause of it all⁠—unhesitatingly she attributed it to that last day at camp with its unfortunate trip to the Basin.

To be sure, she and Jimmy had easily caught up with Jamie, and had, after considerable coaxing, persuaded him to turn about and go on to the Basin with them. But, in spite of everybody’s very evident efforts to act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, nobody really succeeded in doing so. Pollyanna, Jamie, and Jimmy overdid their gayety a bit, perhaps; and the others, while not knowing exactly what had happened, very evidently felt that something was not quite right, though they plainly tried to hide the fact that they did feel so. Naturally, in this state of affairs, restful happiness was out of the question. Even the anticipated fish dinner was flavorless; and early in the afternoon the start was made back to the camp.

Once home again, Pollyanna had hoped that the unhappy episode of the angry bull would be forgotten. But she could not forget it, so in all fairness she could not blame the others if they could not. Always she thought of it now when she looked at Jamie. She saw again the agony on his face, the crimson stain on the palms of his hands. Her heart ached for him, and because it did so ache, his mere presence had come to be a pain to her. Remorsefully she confessed to herself that she did not like to be with Jamie now, nor to talk with him⁠—but that did not mean that she was not often with him. She was with him, indeed, much oftener than before, for so remorseful was she, and so fearful was she that he would detect her unhappy frame of mind, that she lost no opportunity of responding to his overtures of comradeship; and sometimes she deliberately sought him out. This last she did not often have to do, however, for more and more frequently these days Jamie seemed to be turning to her for companionship.

The reason for this, Pollyanna believed, was to be found in this same incident of the bull and the rescue. Not that Jamie ever referred to it directly. He never did that. He was, too, even gayer than usual; but Pollyanna thought she detected sometimes a bitterness underneath it all that was never there before. Certainly she could not help seeing that at times he seemed almost to want to avoid the others, and that he actually sighed, as if with relief, when he found himself alone with her. She thought she knew why this was so, after he said to her, as he did say one day, while they were watching the others play tennis:

“You see, after all, Pollyanna, there isn’t anyone who can quite understand as you can.”

“ ‘Understand’?” Pollyanna had not known what he meant at first. They had been watching the players for five minutes without a word between them.

“Yes; for you, once⁠—couldn’t walk⁠—yourself.”

“Oh-h, yes, I know,” faltered Pollyanna; and she knew that her great distress must have shown in her face, for so quickly and so blithely did he change the subject, after a laughing:

“Come, come, Pollyanna, why don’t you tell me to play the game? I would if I were in your place. Forget it, please. I was a brute to make you look like that!”

And Pollyanna smiled, and said: “No, no⁠—no, indeed!” But she did not “forget it.” She could not. And it all made her only the more anxious to be with Jamie and help him all she could.

“As if now I’d ever let him see that I was ever anything but glad when he was with me!” she thought fervently, as she hurried forward a minute later to take her turn in the game.

Pollyanna, however, was not the only one in the party who felt a new awkwardness and constraint. Jimmy Pendleton felt it, though he, too, tried not to show it.

Jimmy was not happy these days. From a carefree youth whose visions were of wonderful spans across hitherto unbridgeable chasms, he has come to be an anxious-eyed young man whose visions were of a feared rival bearing away the girl he loved.

Jimmy knew very well now that he was in love with Pollyanna. He suspected that he had been in love with her for some time. He stood aghast, indeed, to find himself so shaken and powerless before this thing that had come to him. He knew that