POLLYANNA GROWS UP (Completed)

Chapter 18- A MATTER OF ADJUSTMENT

The first few days at Beldingsville were not easy either for Mrs. Chilton or for Pollyanna. They were days of adjustment; and days of adjustment are seldom easy.

From travel and excitement it was not easy to put one's mind to the consideration of the price of butter and the delinquencies of the butcher. From having all one's time for one's own, it was not easy to find always the next task clamoring to be done. Friends and neighbors called, too, and although Pollyanna welcomed them with glad cordiality, Mrs. Chilton, when possible, excused herself; and always she said bitterly to Pollyanna:

"Curiosity, I suppose, to see how Polly Harrington likes being poor."

Of the doctor Mrs. Chilton seldom spoke, yet Pollyanna knew very well that almost never was he absent from her thoughts; and that more than half her taciturnity was but her usual cloak for a deeper emotion which she did not care to show.

Jimmy Pendleton Pollyanna saw several times during that first month. He came first with John Pendleton for a somewhat stiff and ceremonious call--not that it was either stiff or ceremonious until after Aunt Polly came into the room; then it was both. For some reason Aunt Polly had not excused herself on this occasion. After that Jimmy had come by himself, once with flowers, once with a book for Aunt Polly, twice with no excuse at all. Pollyanna welcomed him with frank pleasure always. Aunt Polly, after that first time, did not see him at all.

To the most of their friends and acquaintances Pollyanna said little about the change in their circumstances. To Jimmy, however, she talked freely, and always her constant cry was: "If only I could do something to bring in some money!"

"I'm getting to be the most mercenary little creature you ever saw," she laughed dolefully. "I've got so I measure everything with a dollar bill, and I actually think in quarters and dimes. You see, Aunt Polly does feel so poor!"

"It's a shame!" stormed Jimmy.

"I know it. But, honestly, I think she feels a little poorer than she needs to--she's brooded over it so. But I do wish I could help!"

Jimmy looked down at the wistful, eager face with its luminous eyes, and his own eyes softened.

"What do you WANT to do--if you could do it?" he asked.

"Oh, I want to cook and keep house," smiled Pollyanna, with a pensive sigh. "I just love to beat eggs and sugar, and hear the soda gurgle its little tune in the cup of sour milk. I'm happy if I've got a day's baking before me. But there isn't any money in that--except in somebody else's kitchen, of course. And I--I don't exactly love it well enough for that!"

"I should say not!" ejaculated the young fellow.

Once more he glanced down at the expressive face so near him. This time a queer look came to the corners of his mouth. He pursed his lips, then spoke, a slow red mounting to his forehead.

"Well, of course you might--marry. Have you thought of that--Miss Pollyanna?"

Pollyanna gave a merry laugh. Voice and manner were unmistakably those of a girl quite untouched by even the most far-reaching of Cupid's darts.

"Oh, no, I shall never marry," she said blithely. "In the first place I'm not pretty, you know; and in the second place, I'm going to live with Aunt Polly and take care of her."

"Not pretty, eh?" smiled Pendleton, quizzically. "Did it ever--er--occur to you that there might be a difference of opinion on that, Pollyanna?"

Pollyanna shook her head.

"There couldn't be. I've got a mirror, you see," she objected, with a merry glance.

It sounded like coquetry. In any other girl it would have been coquetry, Pendleton decided. But, looking into the face before him now, Pendleton knew that it was not coquetry. He knew, too, suddenly, why Pollyanna had seemed so different from any girl he had ever known. Something of her old literal way of looking at things still clung to her.