Page 106 - pollyanna

trance. Pausing only a moment, however, she sped across
the big neglected lawn and around the house to the side
door under the porte-cochere. Her fingers, stiff from their
tight clutch upon the keys, were anything but skilful in
their efforts to turn the bolt in the lock; but at last the heavy,
carved door swung slowly back on its hinges.
Pollyanna caught her breath. In spite of her feeling of
haste, she paused a moment and looked fearfully through
the vestibule to the wide, sombre hall beyond, her thoughts
in a whirl. This was John Pendleton’s house; the house of
mystery; the house into which no one but its master en-
tered; the house which sheltered, somewhere—a skeleton.
Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter alone these fear-
some rooms, and telephone the, doctor that the master of
the house lay now—
With a little cry Pollyanna, looking neither to the right
nor the left, fairly ran through the hall to the door at the end
and opened it.
The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and
hangings like the hall; but through the west window the sun
threw a long shaft of gold across the floor, gleamed dully on
the tarnished brass andirons in the fireplace, and touched
the nickel of the telephone on the great desk in the middle
of the room. It was toward this desk that Pollyanna hur-
riedly tiptoed.
The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the
floor. But Pollyanna found it, and ran her shaking forefin-
ger down through the C’s to ‘Chilton.’ In due time she had
Dr. Chilton himself at the other end of the wires, and was

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