Page 125 - pollyanna

‘Dr. Chilton, I should think being a doctor would, be the
very gladdest kind of a business there was.’
The doctor turned in surprise.
‘ ‘Gladdest’!—when I see so much suffering always, ev-
erywhere I go?’ he cried.
She nodded.
‘I know; but you’re HELPING it—don’t you see?—and of
course you’re glad to help it! And so that makes you the
gladdest of any of us, all the time.’
The doctor’s eyes filled with sudden hot tears. The doc-
tor’s life was a singularly lonely one. He had no wife and no
home save his two-room office in a boarding house. His pro-
fession was very dear to him. Looking now into Pollyanna’s
shining eyes, he felt as if a loving hand had been suddenly
laid on his head in blessing. He knew, too, that never again
would a long day’s work or a long night’s weariness be quite
without that new-found exaltation that had come to him
through Pollyanna’s eyes.
‘God bless you, little girl,’ he said unsteadily. Then, with
the bright smile his patients knew and loved so well, he
added: ‘And I’m thinking, after all, that it was the doctor,
quite as much as his patients, that needed a draft of that
tonic!’ All of which puzzled Pollyanna very much—until a
chipmunk, running across the road, drove the whole mat-
ter from her mind.
The doctor left Pollyanna at her own door, smiled at Nan-
cy, who was sweeping off the front porch, then drove rapidly
away.
‘I’ve had a perfectly beautiful ride with the doctor,’ an-

1 Pollyanna