Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/169

Rh that they do into the rescuin'. But there! I didn't mean to talk such a lot. But—you asked me."

"Yes, I asked you," said Mrs. Carew in a half-stifled voice, as she turned away.

Not only from Sadie Dean, however, was Mrs. Carew learning things never learned before, but from Jamie, also.

Jamie was there a great deal. Pollyanna liked to have him there, and he liked to be there. At first, to be sure, he had hesitated; but very soon he had quieted his doubts and yielded to his longings by telling himself (and Pollyanna) that, after all, visiting was not "staying for keeps."

Mrs. Carew often found the boy and Pollyanna contentedly settled on the library window-seat, with the empty wheel chair close by. Sometimes they were poring over a book. (She heard Jamie tell Pollyanna one day that he didn't think he'd mind so very much being lame if he had so many books as Mrs. Carew, and that he guessed he'd be so happy he'd fly clean away if he had both books and legs.) Sometimes the boy was telling stories, and Pollyanna was listening, wide-eyed and absorbed.

Mrs. Carew wondered at Pollyanna's interest—until one day she herself stopped and listened. After that she wondered no longer—but she listened a good deal longer. Crude and incorrect as was much of the boy's language, it was always wonderfully vivid and picturesque, so that Mrs. Carew found herself, hand in hand with Pollyanna, trailing down the Golden Ages at the beck of a glowing-eyed boy.