Not long after Mrs. Tarbell’s visit, the climax came. It came in the shape of a call from a certain young woman with unnaturally pink cheeks and abnormally yellow hair; a young woman who wore high heels and cheap jewelry; a young woman whom Miss Polly knew very well by reputation — but whom she was angrily amazed to meet beneath the roof of the Harrington homestead.

Miss Polly did not offer her hand. She drew back, indeed, as she entered the room.

The woman rose at once. Her eyes were very red, as if she had been crying. Half defiantly she asked if she might, for a moment, see the little girl, Pollyanna.

Miss Polly said no. She began to say it very sternly; but something in the woman’s pleading eyes made her add the civil explanation that no one was allowed yet to see Pollyanna.

The woman hesitated; then a little brusquely she spoke. Her chin was still at a slightly defiant tilt.

“My name is Mrs. Payson — Mrs. Tom Payson. I presume you’ve heard of me — most of the good people in the town have — and maybe some of the things you’ve heard ain’t true. But never mind that. It’s about the little girl I came. I heard about the accident, and — and it broke me all up. Last week I heard how she couldn’t ever walk again, and — and I wished I could give up my two uselessly well legs for hers. She’d do more good trotting around on ’em one hour than I could in a hundred years. But never mind that. Legs ain’t always given to the one who can make the best use of ’em, I notice.”

She paused, and cleared her throat; but when she resumed her voice was still husky.

“Maybe you don’t know it, but I’ve seen a good deal of that little girl of yours. We live on the Pendleton Hill road, and she used to go by often — only she didn’t always go by. She came in and played with the kids and talked to me — and my man, when he was home. She seemed to like it, and to like us. She didn’t know, I suspect, that her kind of folks don’t generally call on my kind. Maybe if they did call more, Miss Harrington, there wouldn’t be so many — of my kind,” she added, with sudden bitterness.

“Be that as it may, she came; and she didn’t do herself no harm, and she did do us good — a lot o’ good. How much she won’t know — nor can’t know, I hope; ’cause if she did, she’d know other things — that I don’t want her to know.

“But it’s just this. It’s been hard times with us this year, in more ways than one. We’ve been blue and discouraged — my man and me, and ready for — ’most anything. We was reckoning on getting a divorce about now, and letting the kids well, we didn’t know what we would do with the kids. Then came the accident, and what we heard about the little girl’s never walking again. And we got to thinking how she used to come and sit on our doorstep and train with the kids, and laugh, and — and just be glad. She was always being glad about something; and then, one day, she told us why, and about the game, you know; and tried to coax us to play it.

“Well, we’ve heard now that she’s fretting her poor little life out of her, because she can’t play it no more — that there’s nothing to be glad about. And that’s what I came to tell her to-day — that maybe she can be a little glad for us, ’cause we’ve decided to stick to each other, and play the game ourselves. I knew she would be glad, because she used to feel kind of bad — at things we said, sometimes. Just how the game is going to help us, I can’t say that I exactly see, yet; but maybe ’twill. Anyhow, we’re going to try — ’cause she wanted us to. Will you tell her?”

“Yes, I will tell her,” promised Miss Polly, a little faintly. Then, with sudden impulse, she stepped forward and held out her hand. “And thank you for coming, Mrs. Payson,” she said simply.

The defiant chin fell. The lips above it trembled visibly. With an incoherently mumbled something, Mrs. Payson blindly clutched at the outstretched hand, turned, and fled.

The door had scarcely closed behind her before Miss Polly was confronting Nancy in the kitchen.

“Nancy!”

Miss Polly spoke sharply. The series of puzzling, disconcerting visits of the last few days, culminating as they had in the extraordinary experience of the afternoon, had strained her nerves to the snapping point. Not since Miss Pollyanna’s accident had Nancy heard her mistress speak so sternly.

“Nancy, will you tell me what this absurd ‘game’ is that the whole town seems to be babbling about? And what, please, has my niece to do with it? Why does everybody, from Milly Snow to Mrs. Tom Payson, send word to her that they’re ‘playing it’? As near as I can judge, half the town are putting on blue ribbons, or stopping family quarrels, or learning to like something they never liked before, and all because of Pollyanna. I tried to ask the child herself about it, but I can’t seem to make much headway, and of course I don’t like to worry her — now. But from something I heard her say to you last night, I should judge you were one of them, too. Now will you tell me what it all means?”

To Miss Polly’s surprise and dismay, Nancy burst into tears.

“It means that ever since last June that blessed child has jest been makin’ the whole town glad, an’ now they’re turnin’ ’round an’ tryin’ ter make her a little glad, too.”

“Glad of what?”

“Just glad! That’s the game.”

Miss Polly actually stamped her foot.

“There you go like all the rest, Nancy. What game?”

Nancy lifted her chin. She faced her mistress and looked her squarely in the eye.

“I’ll tell ye, ma’am. It’s a game Miss Pollyanna’s father learned her ter play. She got a pair of crutches once in a missionary barrel when she was wantin’ a doll; an’ she cried, of course, like any child would. It seems ’twas then her father told her that there wasn’t ever anythin’ but what there was somethin’ about it that you could be glad about; an’ that she could be glad about them crutches.”

“Glad for — crutches!” Miss Polly choked back a sob — she was thinking of the helpless little legs on the bed up-stairs.

“Yes’m. That’s what I said, an’ Miss Pollyanna said that’s what she said, too. But he told her she could be glad — ’cause she didn’t need ’em.”

“Oh-h!” cried Miss Polly.

“And after that she said he made a regular game of it — findin’ somethin’ in everythin’ ter be glad about. An’ she said ye could do it, too, and that ye didn’t seem ter mind not havin’ the doll so much, ’cause ye was so glad ye didn’t need the crutches. An’ they called it the ‘jest bein’ glad’ game. That’s the game, ma’am. She’s played it ever since.”

“But, how — how — ” Miss Polly came to a helpless pause.

“An’ you’d be surprised ter find how cute it works, ma’am, too,” maintained Nancy, with almost the eagerness of Pollyanna herself. “I wish I could tell ye what a lot she’s done for mother an’ the folks out home. She’s been ter see ’em, ye know, twice, with me. She’s made me glad, too, on such a lot o’ things — little things, an’ big things; an’ it’s made ’em so much easier. For instance, I don’t mind ‘Nancy’ for a name half as much since she told me I could be glad ’twa’n’t ‘Hephzibah.’ An’ there’s Monday mornin’s, too, that I used ter hate so. She’s actually made me glad for Monday mornin’s.”

“Glad — for Monday mornings!”

Nancy laughed.

“I know it does sound nutty, ma’am. But let me tell ye. That blessed lamb found out I hated Monday mornin’s somethin’ awful; an’ what does she up an’ tell me one day but this: ‘Well, anyhow, Nancy, I should think you could be gladder on Monday mornin’ than on any other day in the week, because ’twould be a whole week before you’d have another one!’ An’ I’m blest if I hain’t thought of it ev’ry Monday mornin’ since — an’ it has helped, ma’am. It made me laugh, anyhow, ev’ry time I thought of it; an’ laughin’ helps, ye know — it does, it does!”

“But why hasn’t — she told me — the game?” faltered Miss Polly. “Why has she made such a mystery of it, when I asked her?”

Nancy hesitated.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am, you told her not ter speak of — her father; so she couldn’t tell ye. ’Twas her father’s game, ye see.”

Miss Polly bit her lip.

“She wanted ter tell ye, first off,” continued Nancy, a little unsteadily. “She wanted somebody ter play it with, ye know. That’s why I begun it, so she could have some one.”

“And — and — these others?” Miss Polly’s voice shook now.

“Oh, ev’rybody, ’most, knows it now, I guess. Anyhow, I should think they did from the way I’m hearin’ of it ev’rywhere I go. Of course she told a lot, and they told the rest. Them things go, ye know, when they gets started. An’ she was always so smilin’ an’ pleasant ter ev’ry one, an’ so — so jest glad herself all the time, that they couldn’t help knowin’ it, anyhow. Now, since she’s hurt, ev’rybody feels so bad — specially when they heard how bad she feels ’cause she can’t find anythin’ ter be glad about. An’ so they’ve been comin’ ev’ry day ter tell her how glad she’s made them, hopin’ that’ll help some. Ye see, she’s always wanted ev’rybody ter play the game with her.”

“Well, I know somebody who’ll play it — now,” choked Miss Polly, as she turned and sped through the kitchen doorway.

Behind her, Nancy stood staring amazedly.

“Well, I’ll believe anythin’ — anythin’ now,” she muttered to herself. “Ye can’t stump me with anythin’ I wouldn’t believe, now — o’ Miss Polly!”

A little later, in Pollyanna’s room, the nurse left Miss Polly and Pollyanna alone together.

“And you’ve had still another caller to-day, my dear,” announced Miss Polly, in a voice she vainly tried to steady. “Do you remember Mrs. Payson?”

“Mrs. Payson? Why, I reckon I do! She lives on the way to Mr. Pendleton’s, and she’s got the prettiest little girl baby three years old, and a boy ’most five. She’s awfully nice, and so’s her husband — only they don’t seem to know how nice each other is. Sometimes they fight — I mean, they don’t quite agree. They’re poor, too, they say, and of course they don’t ever have barrels, ’cause he isn’t a missionary minister, you know, like — well, he isn’t.”

A faint color stole into Pollyanna’s cheeks which was duplicated suddenly in those of her aunt.

“But she wears real pretty clothes, sometimes, in spite of their being so poor,” resumed Pollyanna, in some haste. “And she’s got perfectly beautiful rings with diamonds and rubies and emeralds in them; but she says she’s got one ring too many, and that she’s going to throw it away and get a divorce instead. What is a divorce, Aunt Polly? I’m afraid it isn’t very nice, because she didn’t look happy when she talked about it. And she said if she did get it, they wouldn’t live there any more, and that Mr. Payson would go ’way off, and maybe the children, too. But I should think they’d rather keep the ring, even if they did have so many more. Shouldn’t you? Aunt Polly, what is a divorce?”

“But they aren’t going ’way off, dear,” evaded Aunt Polly, hurriedly. “They’re going to stay right there together.”

“Oh, I’m so glad! Then they’ll be there when I go up to see — O dear!” broke off the little girl, miserably. “Aunt Polly, why can’t I remember that my legs don’t go any more, and that I won’t ever, ever go up to see Mr. Pendleton again?”

“There, there, don’t,” choked her aunt. “Perhaps you’ll drive up sometime. But listen! I haven’t told you, yet, all that Mrs. Payson said. She wanted me to tell you that they — they were going to stay together and to play the game, just as you wanted them to.”

Pollyanna smiled through tear-wet eyes.

“Did they? Did they, really? Oh, I am glad of that!”

“Yes, she said she hoped you’d be. That’s why she told you, to make you — glad, Pollyanna.”

Pollyanna looked up quickly.

“Why, Aunt Polly, you — you spoke just as if you knew — Do you know about the game, Aunt Polly?”

“Yes, dear.” Miss Polly sternly forced her voice to be cheerfully matter-of-fact. “Nancy told me. I think it’s a beautiful game. I’m going to play it now — with you.”

“Oh, Aunt Polly — you? I’m so glad! You see, I’ve really wanted you most of anybody, all the time.”

Aunt Polly caught her breath a little sharply. It was even harder this time to keep her voice steady; but she did it.

“Yes, dear; and there are all those others, too. Why, Pollyanna, I think all the town is playing that game now with you — even to the minister! I haven’t had a chance to tell you, yet, but this morning I met Mr. Ford when I was down to the village, and he told me to say to you that just as soon as you could see him, he was coming to tell you that he hadn’t stopped being glad over those eight hundred rejoicing texts that you told him about. So you see, dear, it’s just you that have done it. The whole town is playing the game, and the whole town is wonderfully happier — and all because of one little girl who taught the people a new game, and how to play it.”

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” she cried. Then, suddenly, a wonderful light illumined her face. “Why, Aunt Polly, there is something I can be glad about, after all. I can be glad I’ve had my legs, anyway — else I couldn’t have done — that!”

Chapter XXIX.
Through an Open Window

One by one the short winter days came and went — but they were not short to Pollyanna. They were long, and sometimes full of pain. Very resolutely, these days, however, Pollyanna was turning a cheerful face toward whatever came. Was she not specially bound to play the game, now that Aunt Polly was playing it, too? And Aunt Polly found so many things to be glad about! It was Aunt Polly, too, who discovered the story one day about the two poor little waifs in a snow-storm who found a blown-down door to crawl under, and who wondered what poor folks did that didn’t have any door! And it was Aunt Polly who brought home the other story that she had heard about the poor old lady who had only two teeth, but who was so glad that those two teeth “hit”!

Pollyanna now, like Mrs. Snow, was knitting wonderful things out of bright colored worsteds that trailed their cheery lengths across the white spread, and made Pollyanna — again like Mrs. Snow — so glad she had her hands and arms, anyway.

Pollyanna saw people now, occasionally, and always there were the loving messages from those she could not see; and always they brought her something new to think about — and Pollyanna needed new things to think about.

Once she had seen John Pendleton, and twice she had seen Jimmy Bean. John Pendleton had told her what a fine boy Jimmy was getting to be, and how well he was doing. Jimmy had told her what a first-rate home he had, and what bang-up “folks” Mr. Pendleton made; and both had said that it was all owing to her.

“Which makes me all the gladder, you know, that I have had my legs,” Pollyanna confided to her aunt afterwards.

The winter passed, and spring came. The anxious watchers over Pollyanna’s condition could see little change wrought by the prescribed treatment. There seemed every reason to believe, indeed, that Dr. Mead’s worst fears would be realized — that Pollyanna would never walk again.

Beldingsville, of course, kept itself informed concerning Pollyanna; and of Beldingsville, one man in particular fumed and fretted himself into a fever of anxiety over the daily bulletins which he managed in some way to procure from the bed of suffering. As the days passed, however, and the news came to be no better, but rather worse, something besides anxiety began to show in the man’s face: despair, and a very dogged determination, each fighting for the mastery. In the end, the dogged determination won; and it was then that Mr. John Pendleton, somewhat to his surprise, received one Saturday morning a call from Dr. Thomas Chilton.

“Pendleton,” began the doctor, abruptly, “I’ve come to you because you, better than any one else in town, know something of my relations with Miss Polly Harrington.”

John Pendleton was conscious that he must have started visibly — he did know something of the affair between Polly Harrington and Thomas Chilton, but the matter had not been mentioned between them for fifteen years, or more.

“Yes,” he said, trying to make his voice sound concerned enough for sympathy, and not eager enough for curiosity. In a moment he saw that he need not have worried, however: the doctor was quite too intent on his errand to notice how that errand was received.

“Pendleton, I want to see that child. I want to make an examination. I must make an examination.”

“Well — can’t you?”

“Can’t I! Pendleton, you know very well I haven’t been inside that door for more than fifteen years. You don’t know — but I will tell you — that the mistress of that house told me that the next time she asked me to enter it, I might take it that she was begging my pardon, and that all would be as before — which meant that she’d marry me. Perhaps you see her summoning me now — but I don’t!”

“But couldn’t you go — without a summons?”

The doctor frowned.

“Well, hardly. I have some pride, you know.”

“But if you’re so anxious — couldn’t you swallow your pride and forget the quarrel — ”

“Forget the quarrel!” interrupted the doctor, savagely. “I’m not talking of that kind of pride. So far as that is concerned, I’d go from here there on my knees — or on my head — if that would do any good. It’s professional pride I’m talking about. It’s a case of sickness, and I’m a doctor. I can’t butt in and say, ‘Here, take me!’ can I?”

“Chilton, what was the quarrel?” demanded Pendleton.

The doctor made an impatient gesture, and got to his feet.

“What was it? What’s any lovers’ quarrel after it’s over?” he snarled, pacing the room angrily. “A silly wrangle over the size of the moon or the depth of a river, maybe — it might as well be, so far as its having any real significance compared to the years of misery that follow them! Never mind the quarrel! So far as I am concerned, I am willing to say there was no quarrel. Pendleton, I must see that child. It may mean life or death. It will mean — I honestly believe — nine chances out of ten that Pollyanna Whittier will walk again!”

The words were spoken clearly, impressively; and they were spoken just as the one who uttered them had almost reached the open window near John Pendleton’s chair. Thus it happened that very distinctly they reached the ears of a small boy kneeling beneath the window on the ground outside.

Jimmy Bean, at his Saturday morning task of pulling up the first little green weeds of the flowerbeds, sat up with ears and eyes wide open.

“Walk! Pollyanna!” John Pendleton was saying. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that from what I can hear and learn — a mile from her bedside — that her case is very much like one that a college friend of mine has just helped. For years he’s been making this sort of thing a special study. I’ve kept in touch with him, and studied, too, in a way. And from what I hear — but I want to see the girl!”

John Pendleton came erect in his chair.

“You must see her, man! Couldn’t you — say, through Dr. Warren?”

The other shook his head.

“I’m afraid not. Warren has been very decent, though. He told me himself that he suggested consultation with me at the first, but — Miss Harrington said no so decisively that he didn’t dare venture it again, even though he knew of my desire to see the child. Lately, some of his best patients have come over to me — so of course that ties my hands still more effectually. But, Pendleton, I’ve got to see that child! Think of what it may mean to her — if I do!”

“Yes, and think of what it will mean — if you don’t!” retorted Pendleton.

“But how can I — without a direct request from her aunt? — which I’ll never get!”

“She must be made to ask you!”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“No, I guess you don’t — nor anybody else. She’s too proud and too angry to ask me — after what she said years ago it would mean if she did ask me. But when I think of that child, doomed to lifelong misery, and when I think that maybe in my hands lies a chance of escape, but for that confounded nonsense we call pride and professional etiquette, I — ” He did not finish his sentence, but with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he turned and began to tramp up and down the room again, angrily.

“But if she could be made to see — to understand,” urged John Pendleton.

“Yes; and who’s going to do it?” demanded the doctor, with a savage turn.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” groaned the other, miserably.

Outside the window Jimmy Bean stirred suddenly. Up to now he had scarcely breathed, so intently had he listened to every word.

“Well, by Jinks, I know!” he whispered, exultingly. “I’m a-goin’ ter do it!” And forthwith he rose to his feet, crept stealthily around the corner of the house, and ran with all his might down Pendleton Hill.

Chapter XXX.
Jimmy Takes the Helm

“It’s Jimmy Bean. He wants ter see ye, ma’am,” announced Nancy in the doorway.

“Me?” rejoined Miss Polly, plainly surprised. “Are you sure he did not mean Miss Pollyanna? He may see her a few minutes to-day, if he likes.”

“Yes’m. I told him. But he said it was you he wanted.”

“Very well, I’ll come down.” And Miss Polly arose from her chair a little wearily.

In the sitting room she found waiting for her a round-eyed, flushed-faced boy, who began to speak at once.

“Ma’am, I s’pose it’s dreadful — what I’m doin’, an’ what I’m sayin’; but I can’t help it. It’s for Pollyanna, and I’d walk over hot coals for her, or face you, or — or anythin’ like that, any time. An’ I think you would, too, if you thought there was a chance for her ter walk again. An’ so that’s why I come ter tell ye that as long as it’s only pride an’ et — et-somethin’ that’s keepin’ Pollyanna from walkin’, why I knew you would ask Dr. Chilton here if you understood — ”

“Wh-at?” interrupted Miss Polly, the look of stupefaction on her face changing to one of angry indignation.

Jimmy sighed despairingly.

“There, I didn’t mean ter make ye mad. That’s why I begun by tellin’ ye about her walkin’ again. I thought you’d listen ter that.”

“Jimmy, what are you talking about?”

Jimmy sighed again.

“That’s what I’m tryin’ ter tell ye.”

“Well, then tell me. But begin at the beginning, and be sure I understand each thing as you go. Don’t plunge into the middle of it as you did before — and mix everything all up!”