Pollyanna: The First Glad Book. Pollyanna Grows Up: The Second Glad Book / Поллианна. Поллианна вырастает

I’ve got ter get them dishes done, ye know.”

“I’ll help,” promised Pollyanna, promptly.

“Oh, Miss Pollyanna!” demurred Nancy.

For a moment there was silence. The sky was darkening fast. Pollyanna took a firmer hold of her friend’s arm.

“I reckon I’m glad, after all, that you DID get scared-a little, �cause then you came after me,” she shivered.

“Poor little lamb! And you must be hungry, too. I–I’m afraid you’ll have ter have bread and milk in the kitchen with me.

Yer aunt didn’t like it-because you didn’t come down ter supper, ye know.”

“But I couldn’t. I was up here.”

“Yes; but-she didn’t know that, you see!” observed Nancy, dryly, stifling a chuckle. “I’m sorry about the bread and milk; I am, I am.”

“Oh, I’m not. I’m glad.”

“Glad! Why?”

“Why, I like bread and milk, and I’d like to eat with you. I don’t see any trouble about being glad about that.”

“You don’t seem ter see any trouble bein’ glad about everythin’,” retorted Nancy, choking a little over her remembrance of Pollyanna’s brave attempts to like the bare little attic room.

Pollyanna laughed softly.

“Well, that’s the game, you know, anyway.”

“The-GAME?”

“Yes; the �just being glad’ game.”

“Whatever in the world are you talkin’ about?”

“Why, it’s a game. Father told it to me, and it’s lovely,” rejoined Pollyanna. “We’ve played it always, ever since I was a little, little girl.

I told the Ladies’ Aid, and they played it-some of them.”

“What is it? I ain’t much on games, though.”

Pollyanna laughed again, but she sighed, too; and in the gathering twilight her face looked thin and wistful.

“Why, we began it on some crutches that came in a missionary barrel.”

“CRUTCHES!”

“Yes. You see I’d wanted a doll, and father had written them so; but when the barrel came the lady wrote that there hadn’t any dolls come in, but the little crutches had.

So she sent �em along as they might come in handy for some child, sometime. And that’s when we began it.”

“Well, I must say I can’t see any game about that, about that,” declared Nancy, almost irritably.

“Oh, yes; the game was to just find something about everything to be glad about-no matter what �twas,” rejoined Pollyanna, earnestly. “And we began right then-on the crutches.