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

“There, there, child, I beg your pardon, I’m sure; it’s only this confounded leg of mine. Now listen.” He paused, and with some difficulty reached his hand into his trousers pocket and brought out a bunch of keys, singling out one between his thumb and forefinger. “Straight through the path there, about five minutes’ walk, is my house. This key will admit you to the side door under the porte-cochere. Do you know what a porte-cochere is?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Auntie has one with a sun parlor over it.

That’s the roof I slept on-only I didn’t sleep, you know. They found me.”

“Eh? Oh! Well, when you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you’ll find a telephone. Do you know how to use a telephone?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Why, once when Aunt Polly-”

“Never mind Aunt Polly now,” cut in the man scowlingly, as he tried to move himself a little.

“Hunt up Dr.

Thomas Chilton’s number on the card you’ll find somewhere around there-it ought to be on the hook down at the side, but it probably won’t be. You know a telephone card, I suppose, when you see one!”

“Oh, yes, sir! I just love Aunt Polly’s. There’s such a lot of queer names, and-”

“Tell Dr. Chilton that John Pendleton is at the foot of Little Eagle Ledge in Pendleton Woods with a broken leg, and to come at once with a stretcher and two men. He’ll know what to do besides that.

Tell him to come by the path from the house.”

“A broken leg? Oh, Mr. Pendleton, how perfectly awful!” shuddered Pollyanna. “But I’m so glad I came! Can’t I do-”

“Yes, you can-but evidently you won’t! WILL you go and do what I ask and stop talking,” moaned the man, faintly. And, with a little sobbing cry, Pollyanna went.

Pollyanna did not stop now to look up at the patches of blue between the sunlit tops of the trees. She kept her eyes on the ground to make sure that no twig nor stone tripped her hurrying feet.

It was not long before she came in sight of the house. She had seen it before, though never so near as this. She was almost frightened now at the massiveness of the great pile of gray stone with its pillared verandas and its imposing entrance. Pausing only a moment, however, she sped across the big neglected lawn and around the house to the side door under the porte-cochere.