Page 138 - pollyanna

a lighter voice.
‘Did you like it?’ asked Pollyanna with interest.
‘Very much. I suppose—there isn’t any more to-day that—
that Aunt Polly DIDN’T send, is there?’ he asked with an
odd smile.
His visitor looked distressed.
‘N-no, sir.’ She hesitated, then went on with heightened
color. ‘Please, Mr. Pendleton, I didn’t mean to be rude the
other day when I said Aunt Polly did NOT send the jelly.’
There was no answer. John Pendleton was not smiling
now. He was looking straight ahead of him with eyes that
seemed to be gazing through and beyond the object before
them. After a time he drew a long sigh and turned to Pol-
lyanna. When he spoke his voice carried the old nervous
fretfulness.
‘Well, well, this will never do at all! I didn’t send for you
to see me moping this time. Listen! Out in the library—the
big room where the telephone is, you know—you will find
a carved box on the lower shelf of the big case with glass
doors in the corner not far from the fireplace. That is, it’ll
be there if that confounded woman hasn’t ‘regulated’ it to
somewhere else! You may bring it to me. It is heavy, but not
too heavy for you to carry, I think.’
‘Oh, I’m awfully strong,’ declared Pollyanna, cheerfully,
as she sprang to her feet. In a minute she had returned with
the box.
It was a wonderful half-hour that Pollyanna spent then.
The box was full of treasures—curios that John Pendle-
ton had picked up in years of travel—and concerning each

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