Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/73

Rh "Yes—this, you know—all these people here to-day. It is a party, isn't it? The lady said it was for everybody, so I stayed—though I haven't got to where the house is, yet, that's giving the party."

The man's lips twitched.

"Well, little lady, perhaps it is a party, in a way," he smiled; "but the 'house' that's giving it is the city of Boston. This is the Public Garden—a public park, you understand, for everybody."

"Is it? Always? And I may come here any time I want to? Oh, how perfectly lovely! That's even nicer than I thought it could be. I'd worried for fear I couldn't ever come again, after to-day, you see. I'm glad now, though, that I didn't know it just at the first, for it's all the nicer now. Nice things are nicer when you've been worrying for fear they won't be nice, aren't they?"

"Perhaps they are—if they ever turn out to be nice at all," conceded the man, a little gloomily.

"Yes, I think so," nodded Pollyanna, not noticing the gloom. "But isn't it beautiful—here?" she gloried. "I wonder if Mrs. Carew knows about it—that it's for anybody, so. Why, I should think everybody would want to come here all the time, and just stay and look around."

The man's face hardened.

"Well, there are a few people in the world who have got a job—who've got something to do besides just to come here and stay and look around; but I don't happen to be one of them."

"Don't you? Then you can be glad for that, can't