Page 164 - pollyanna
P. 164
cy, THAT isn’t the way to play the game—to be glad for
things like that!’ she objected.
‘There wa’n’t no game in it,’ retorted Nancy. ‘Never
thought of it. YOU don’t seem ter sense what it means ter
have Miss Polly WORRIED about ye, child!’
‘Why, it means worried—and worried is horrid—to feel,’
maintained Pollyanna. ‘What else can it mean?’
Nancy tossed her head.
‘Well, I’ll tell ye what it means. It means she’s at last get-
tin’ down somewheres near human—like folks; an’ that she
ain’t jest doin’ her duty by ye all the time.’
‘Why, Nancy,’ demurred the scandalized Pollyanna,
‘Aunt Polly always does her duty. She—she’s a very dutiful
woman!’ Unconsciously Pollyanna repeated John Pendle-
ton’s words of half an hour before.
Nancy chuckled.
‘You’re right she is—and she always was, I guess! But
she’s somethin’ more, now, since you came.’
Pollyanna’s face changed. Her brows drew into a trou-
bled frown.
‘There, that’s what I was going to ask you, Nancy,’ she
sighed. ‘Do you think Aunt Polly likes to have me here?
Would she mind—if if I wasn’t here any more?’
Nancy threw a quick look into the little girl’s absorbed
face. She had expected to be asked this question long before,
and she had dreaded it. She had wondered how she should
answer it—how she could answer it honestly without cru-
elly hurting the questioner. But now, NOW, in the face of
the new suspicions that had become convictions by the
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