Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/113

Rh "Does 'mumsey' mean—mother?"

"Sure!"

Pollyanna relaxed visibly. Her face fell. If this Jamie had a mother, he could not, of course, be Mrs. Carew's Jamie, whose mother had died long ago. Still, even as he was, he was wonderfully interesting.

"But where do you live?" she catechized eagerly. "Is there anybody else in your family but your mother and—and Jerry? Do you always come here every day? Where is your Jolly Book? Mayn't I see it? Don't the doctors say you can ever walk again? And where was it you said you got it?—this wheel chair, I mean."

The boy chuckled.

"Say, how many of them questions do you expect me to answer all at once? I'll begin at the last one, anyhow, and work backwards, maybe, if I don't forget what they be. I got this chair a year ago. Jerry knew one of them fellers what writes for papers, you know, and he put it in about me—how I couldn't ever walk, and all that, and—and the Jolly Book, you see. The first thing I knew, a whole lot of men and women come one day toting this chair, and said 'twas for me. That they'd read all about me, and they wanted me to have it to remember them by."

"My! how glad you must have been!"

"I was. It took a whole page of my Jolly Book to tell about that chair."

"But can't you ever walk again?" Pollyanna's eyes were blurred with tears.