Pollyanna Crows up / Поллианна вырастает. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I just want to keep talking and talking, for fear, if I stop, it’ll give you a chance to say no. And so, if you ARE tempted to say that dreadful word, won’t you please consider that – that I’m still talking, and telling you how much we want and need Pollyanna.

“Hopefully yours,

    “DELLA WETHERBY.”

“There!” ejaculated Mrs. Chilton, as she laid the letter down. “Did you ever read such a remarkable letter, or hear of a more preposterous, absurd request?”

“Well, I’m not so sure,” smiled the doctor.

“I don’t think it’s absurd to want Pollyanna.”

“But – but the way she puts it – healing the wound in her sister’s heart, and all that. One would think the child was some sort of – of medicine!”

The doctor laughed outright, and raised his eyebrows.

“Well, I’m not so sure but she is, Polly. I ALWAYS said I wished I could prescribe her and buy her as I would a box of pills; and Charlie Ames says they always made it a point at the Sanatorium to give their patients a dose of Pollyanna as soon as possible after their arrival, during the whole year she was there.

”

“�Dose,’ indeed!” scorned Mrs. Chilton.

“Then – you don’t think you’ll let her go?”

“Go? Why, of course not! Do you think I’d let that child go to perfect strangers like that? – and such strangers! Why, Thomas, I should expect that that nurse would have her all bottled and labeled with full directions on the outside how to take her, by the time I’d got back from Germany.

”

Again the doctor threw back his head and laughed heartily, but only for a moment. His face changed perceptibly as he reached into his pocket for a letter.

“I heard from Dr. Ames myself, this morning,” he said, with an odd something in his voice that brought a puzzled frown to his wife’s brow. “Suppose I read you my letter now.”

“Dear Tom,” he began.

“Miss Della Wetherby has asked me to give her and her sister a �character,’ which I am very glad to do. I have known the Wetherby girls from babyhood. They come from a fine old family, and are thoroughbred gentlewomen. You need not fear on that score.

“There were three sisters, Doris, Ruth, and Della. Doris married a man named John Kent, much against the family’s wishes. Kent came from good stock[10 - came from good stock – (разг.