Page 159 - pollyanna

didn’t know.’
‘Then you—weren’t lovers? Pollyanna’s Voice was tragic
with dismay.
‘Never!’
‘And it ISN’T all coming out like a book?’
There was no answer. The man’s eyes were moodily fixed
out the window.
‘O dear! And it was all going so splendidly,’ almost
sobbed Pollyanna. ‘I’d have been so glad to come—with
Aunt Polly.’
‘And you won’t—now?’ The man asked the question with-
out turning his head.
‘Of course not! I’m Aunt Polly’s.’
The man turned now, almost fiercely.
‘Before you were hers, Pollyanna, you were—your moth-
er’s. And—it was your mother’s hand and heart that I
wanted long years ago.’
‘My mother’s!’
‘Yes. I had not meant to tell you, but perhaps it’s better,
after all, that I do—now.’ John Pendleton’s face had grown
very white. He was speaking with evident difficulty. Pol-
lyanna, her eyes wide and frightened, and her lips parted,
was gazing at him fixedly. ‘I loved your mother; but she—
didn’t love me. And after a time she went away with—your
father. I did not know until then how much I did—care. The
whole world suddenly seemed to turn black under my fin-
gers, and—But, never mind. For long years I have been a
cross, crabbed, unlovable, unloved old man—though I’m
not nearly sixty, yet, Pollyanna. Then, One day, like one of

1 Pollyanna