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

And how glad you must be all the time, that you can do it! I used to think being a doctor was the very gladdest business there was, but I reckon, after all, being a policeman is gladder yet – to help frightened people like this, you know. And —” But with another “Brrrr!” and an embarrassed laugh, the big blue-coated man was back in the middle of the street, and Pollyanna was all alone on the curbstone.

For only a minute longer did Pollyanna watch her fascinating “Red Sea,” then, with a regretful backward glance, she turned away.

“I reckon maybe I’d better be going home now,” she meditated. “It must be ’most dinner time.” And briskly she started to walk back by the way she had come.

Not until she had hesitated at several corners, and unwittingly made two false turns, did Pollyanna grasp the fact that “going back home” was not to be so easy as she had thought it to be. And not until she came to a building which she knew she had never seen before, did she fully realize that she had lost her way.

She was on a narrow street, dirty, and ill-paved. Dingy tenement blocks and a few unattractive stores were on either side. All about were jabbering men and chattering women – though not one word of what they said could Pollyanna understand. Moreover, she could not help seeing that the people looked at her very curiously, as if they knew she did not belong there[35 - she did not belong there – (разг.

) она здесь чужая].

Several times, already, she had asked her way, but in vain. No one seemed to know where Mrs. Carew lived; and, the last two times, those addressed had answered with a gesture and a jumble of words which Pollyanna, after some thought, decided must be “Dutch,” the kind the Haggermans – the only foreign family in Beldingsville – used.

On and on, down one street and up another, Pollyanna trudged. She was thoroughly frightened now.

She was hungry, too, and very tired. Her feet ached, and her eyes smarted with the tears she was trying so hard to hold back. Worse yet, it was unmistakably beginning to grow dark.

“Well, anyhow,” she choked to herself, “I’m going to be glad I’m lost, ’cause it’ll be so nice when I get found. I CAN be glad for that!”

It was at a noisy corner where two broader streets crossed that Pollyanna finally came to a dismayed stop.