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

“Haven’t I – Oh, Della!” The voice grew suddenly warm with love and surprise. “You dear girl, where did you come from?”

“Yes, it’s Della,” smiled that young woman, blithely, already halfway across the room. “I’ve come from an over-Sunday at the beach with two of the other nurses, and I’m on my way back to the Sanatorium now. That is, I’m here now, but I sha’n’t be long. I stepped in for – this,” she finished, giving the owner of the “dear-me-what-now” voice a hearty kiss.

Mrs.

Carew frowned and drew back a little coldly. The slight touch of joy and animation that had come into her face fled, leaving only a dispirited fretfulness that was plainly very much at home there.

“Oh, of course! I might have known,” she said. “You never stay – here.”

“Here!” Della Wetherby laughed merrily, and threw up her hands; then, abruptly, her voice and manner changed. She regarded her sister with grave, tender eyes. “Ruth, dear, I couldn’t – I just couldn’t live in this house.

You know I couldn’t,” she finished gently.

Mrs. Carew stirred irritably.

“I’m sure I don’t see why not,” she fenced.

Della Wetherby shook her head.

“Yes, you do, dear. You know I’m entirely out of sympathy with it all: the gloom, the lack of aim, the insistence on misery and bitterness.”

“But I AM miserable and bitter.”

“You ought not to be.”

“Why not? What have I to make me otherwise?”

Della Wetherby gave an impatient gesture.

“Ruth, look here,” she challenged. “You’re thirty-three years old. You have good health – or would have, if you treated yourself properly – and you certainly have an abundance of time and a superabundance of money. Surely anybody would say you ought to find SOMETHING to do this glorious morning besides sitting moped up in this tomb-like house with instructions to the maid that you’ll see no one.”

“But I don’t WANT to see anybody.”

“Then I’d MAKE myself want to.

”

Mrs. Carew sighed wearily and turned away her head.

“Oh, Della, why won’t you ever understand? I’m not like you. I can’t – forget.”

A swift pain crossed the younger woman’s face.

“You mean – Jamie, I suppose. I don’t forget – that, dear. I couldn’t, of course. But moping won’t help us – find him.”

“As if I hadn’t TRIED to find him, for eight long years – and by something besides moping,” flashed Mrs.