Page 175 - pollyanna

foot of the tree, appeared to have forgotten Pollyanna’s
presence. He had pulled some papers from his pocket and
unfolded them; but he was not looking at them. He was
gazing, instead, at a leaf on the ground a little distance
away—and it was not even a pretty leaf. It was brown and
dead. Pollyanna, looking at him, felt vaguely sorry for him.
‘It—it’s a nice day,’ she began hopefully.
For a moment there was no answer; then the minister
looked up with a start.
‘What? Oh!—yes, it is a very nice day.’
‘And ‘tisn’t cold at all, either, even if ‘tis October,’ ob-
served Pollyanna, still more hopefully. ‘Mr. Pendleton had
a fire, but he said he didn’t need it. It was just to look at. I
like to look at fires, don’t you?’
There was no reply this time, though Pollyanna waited
patiently, before she tried again—by a new route.
‘Do You like being a minister?’
The Rev. Paul Ford looked up now, very quickly.
‘Do I like—Why, what an odd question! Why do you ask
that, my dear?’
‘Nothing—only the way you looked. It made me think of
my father. He used to look like that—sometimes.’
‘Did he?’ The minister’s voice was polite, but his eyes had
gone back to the dried leaf on the ground.
‘Yes, and I used to ask him just as I did you if he was glad
he was a minister.’
The man under the tree smiled a little sadly.
‘Well—what did he say?’
‘Oh, he always said he was, of course, but ‘most always

1 Pollyanna