Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/161

Rh three girls whose names I don't know that live under the Murphys, and a whole lot more, if we have room for 'em. And only think how glad they'll be when I tell 'em! Why, Mrs. Carew, seems to me as if I never knew anything so perfectly lovely in all my life—and it's all your doings! Now mayn't I begin right away to invite 'em—so they'll know what's coming to 'em?"

And Mrs. Carew, who would not have believed such a thing possible, heard herself murmuring a faint "yes," which, she knew, bound her to the giving of a Christmas-tree party on New Year's Eve to a dozen children from Murphy's Alley and a young salesgirl whose name she did not know.

Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's memory was still lingering a young girl's "Sometimes I wonder there don't some of 'em think of helpin' the girls before they go wrong." Perhaps in her ears was still ringing Pollyanna's story of that same girl who had found a crowd in a big city the loneliest place in the world, yet who had refused to go with the handsome man that had "noticed too much." Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's heart was the undefined hope that somewhere in it all lay the peace she had so longed for. Perhaps it was a little of all three combined with utter helplessness in the face of Pollyanna's amazing twisting of her irritated sarcasm into the wide-sweeping hospitality of a willing hostess. Whatever it was, the thing was done; and at once Mrs. Carew found herself caught into a veritable whirl of plans and plottings, the center of which was always Pollyanna and the party.