POLLYANNA GROWS UP (Completed)

Chapter 17- WHEN POLLYANNA CAME

As the train neared Beldingsville, Pollyanna watched her aunt anxiously. All day Mrs. Chilton had been growing more and more restless, more and more gloomy; and Pollyanna was fearful of the time when the familiar home station should be reached.

As Pollyanna looked at her aunt, her heart ached. She was thinking that she would not have believed it possible that any one could have changed and aged so greatly in six short months. Mrs. Chilton's eyes were lusterless, her cheeks pallid and shrunken, and her forehead crossed and recrossed by fretful lines. Her mouth drooped at the corners, and her hair was combed tightly back in the unbecoming fashion that had been hers when Pollyanna first had seen her, years before. All the softness and sweetness that seemed to have come to her with her marriage had dropped from her like a cloak, leaving uppermost the old hardness and sourness that had been hers when she was Miss Polly Harrington, unloved, and unloving.

"Pollyanna!" Mrs. Chilton's voice was incisive.

Pollyanna started guiltily. She had an uncomfortable feeling that her aunt might have read her thoughts.

"Yes, auntie."

"Where is that black bag--the little one?"

"Right here."

"Well, I wish you'd get out my black veil. We're nearly there."

"But it's so hot and thick, auntie!"

"Pollyanna, I asked for that black veil. If you'd please learn to do what I ask without arguing about it, it would be a great deal easier for me. I want that veil. Do you suppose I'm going to give all Beldingsville a chance to see how I 'take it'?"

"Oh, auntie, they'd never be there in THAT spirit," protested Pollyanna, hurriedly rummaging in the black bag for the much-wanted veil. "Besides, there won't be anybody there, anyway, to meet us. We didn't tell any one we were coming, you know."

"Yes, I know. We didn't TELL any one to meet us. But we instructed Mrs. Durgin to have the rooms aired and the key under the mat for to-day. Do you suppose Mary Durgin has kept that information to herself? Not much! Half the town knows we're coming to-day, and a dozen or more will 'happen around' the station about train time. I know them! They want to see what Polly Harrington POOR looks like. They--"

"Oh, auntie, auntie," begged Pollyanna, with tears in her eyes.

"If I wasn't so alone. If--the doctor were only here, and--" She stopped speaking and turned away her head. Her mouth worked convulsively. "Where is--that veil?" she choked huskily.

"Yes, dear. Here it is--right here," comforted Pollyanna, whose only aim now, plainly, was to get the veil into her aunt's hands with all haste. "And here we are now almost there. Oh, auntie, I do wish you'd had Old Tom or Timothy meet us!"

"And ride home in state, as if we could AFFORD to keep such horses and carriages? And when we know we shall have to sell them to-morrow? No, I thank you, Pollyanna. I prefer to use the public carriage, under those circumstances."

"I know, but--" The train came to a jolting, jarring stop, and only a fluttering sigh finished Pollyanna's sentence.

As the two women stepped to the platform, Mrs. Chilton, in her black veil, looked neither to the right nor the left. Pollyanna, however, was nodding and smiling tearfully in half a dozen directions before she had taken twice as many steps. Then, suddenly, she found herself looking into a familiar, yet strangely unfamiliar face.

"Why, it isn't--it IS--Jimmy!" she beamed, reaching forth a cordial hand. "That is, I suppose I should say 'MR. PENDLETON,'" she corrected herself with a shy smile that said plainly: "Now that you've grown so tall and fine!"