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170 and continues to keep it up, that child will be a wreck. That's why I said Pollyanna would need some kind of a game if ever anybody did."

"The pity of it!—to think of that happening to Pollyanna!" exclaimed the young man, in a voice that was not quite steady.

"Yes; and you can see all is not right by the way they are coming to-day—so quietly, with not a word to anybody. That was Polly Chilton's doings, I'll warrant. She didn't want to be met by anybody. I understand she wrote to no one but her Old Tom's wife, Mrs. Durgin, who had the keys."

"Yes, so Nancy told me—good old soul! She'd got the whole house open, and had contrived somehow to make it look as if it wasn't a tomb of dead hopes and lost pleasures. Of course the grounds looked fairly well, for Old Tom has kept them up, after a fashion. But it made my heart ache—the whole thing."

There was a long silence, then, curtly, John Pendleton suggested:

"They ought to be met."

"They will be met."

"Are you going to the station?"

"I am."

"Then you know what train they're coming on."

"Oh, no. Neither does Nancy."

"Then how will you manage?"

"I'm going to begin in the morning and go to every train till they come," laughed the young man, a bit grimly. "Timothy's going, too, with the family car-