Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/52

34 eggs or soda, and—Oh, but do you live here?" she interrupted herself, as the car came to a stop before the imposing Carew doorway. "Do you live here, Mrs. Carew?"

"Why, yes, of course I live here," returned the lady, with just a touch of irritation.

"Oh, how glad, glad you must be to live in such a perfectly lovely place!" exulted the little girl, springing to the sidewalk and looking eagerly about her. "Aren't you glad?"

Mrs. Carew did not reply. With unsmiling lips and frowning brow she was stepping from the limousine.

For the second time in five minutes, Pollyanna hastened to make amends.

"Of course I don't mean the kind of glad that's sinfully proud," she explained, searching Mrs. Carew's face with anxious eyes. "Maybe you thought I did, same as Aunt Polly used to, sometimes. I don't mean the kind that's glad because you've got something somebody else can't have; but the kind that just—just makes you want to shout and yell and bang doors, you know, even if it isn't proper," she finished, dancing up and down on her toes.

The chauffeur turned his back precipitately, and busied himself with the car. Mrs. Carew, still with unsmiling lips and frowning brow led the way up the broad stone steps.

"Come, Pollyanna," was all she said, crisply.

It was five days later that Della Wetherby received the letter from her sister, and very eagerly she tore