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

“Come, we’ll see to your trunk now, then we’ll go home. I had hoped that my sister would come with us; but it seems she didn’t see fit – even for this one night.”

Pollyanna smiled and nodded.

“I know; but she couldn’t, probably. Somebody wanted her, I expect. Somebody was always wanting her at the Sanatorium. It’s a bother, of course, when folks do want you all the time, isn’t it? – ’cause you can’t have yourself when you want yourself, lots of times. Still, you can be kind of glad for that, for it IS nice to be wanted, isn’t it?”

There was no reply – perhaps because for the first time in her life Mrs.

Carew was wondering if anywhere in the world there was any one who really wanted her – not that she WISHED to be wanted, of course, she told herself angrily, pulling herself up with a jerk, and frowning down at the child by her side.

Pollyanna did not see the frown. Pollyanna’s eyes were on the hurrying throngs about them.

“My! what a lot of people,” she was saying happily. “There’s even more of them than there was the other time I was here; but I haven’t seen anybody, yet, that I saw then, though I’ve looked for them everywhere. Of course the lady and the little baby lived in Honolulu, so probably THEY WOULDN’t be here; but there was a little girl, Susie Smith – she lived right here in Boston. Maybe you know her though. Do you know Susie Smith?”

“No, I don’t know Susie Smith,” replied Mrs.

Carew, dryly.

“Don’t you? She’s awfully nice, and SHE’s pretty – black curls, you know; the kind I’m going to have when I go to Heaven. But never mind; maybe I can find her for you so you WILL know her. Oh, my! what a perfectly lovely automobile! And are we going to ride in it?” broke off Pollyanna, as they came to a pause before a handsome limousine, the door of which a liveried chauffeur was holding open.

The chauffeur tried to hide a smile – and failed.

Mrs. Carew, however, answered with the weariness of one to whom “rides” are never anything but a means of locomotion from one tiresome place to another probably quite as tiresome.

“Yes, we’re going to ride in it.” Then “Home, Perkins,” she added to the deferential chauffeur.

“Oh, my, is it yours?” asked Pollyanna, detecting the unmistakable air of ownership in her hostess’s manner.