Элинор Портер - Pollyanna Crows up / Поллианна вырастает. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“I have, I know I have – somewhere,” she declared musingly. “Of course it may have been in Boston; but – ” She let the sentence remain unfinished; then, after a minute she added: “He’s a fine young fellow, anyway. I like him.”

“I’m so glad! I do, too,” nodded Pollyanna. “I’ve always liked Jimmy.”

“You’ve known him some time, then?” queried Jamie, a little wistfully.

“Oh, yes. I knew him years ago when I was a little girl, you know. He was Jimmy Bean then.”

“Jimmy BEAN! Why, isn’t he Mr. Pendleton’s son?” asked Mrs. Carew, in surprise.

“No, only by adoption.”

“Adoption!” exclaimed Jamie. “Then HE isn’t a real son any more than I am.” There was a curious note of almost joy in the lad’s voice.

“No. Mr. Pendleton hasn’t any children. He never married. He – he was going to, once, but he – he didn’t.” Pollyanna blushed and spoke with sudden diffidence. Pollyanna had never forgotten that it was her mother who, in the long ago, had said no to this same John Pendleton, and who had thus been responsible for the man’s long, lonely years of bachelorhood.

Mrs. Carew and Jamie, however, being unaware of this, and seeing now only the blush on Pollyanna’s cheek and the diffidence in her manner, drew suddenly the same conclusion.

“Is it possible,” they asked themselves, “that this man, John Pendleton, ever had a love affair with Pollyanna, child that she is [111] child that she is – ( разг. ) хотя она, в сущности, еще ребенок ?”

Naturally they did not say this aloud; so, naturally, there was no answer possible. Naturally, too, perhaps, the thought, though unspoken, was still not forgotten, but was tucked away in a corner of their minds for future reference – if need arose.

Before the Carews came, Pollyanna had told Jimmy that she was depending on him to help her entertain them. Jimmy had not expressed himself then as being overwhelmingly desirous to serve her in this way; but before the Carews had been in town a fortnight, he had shown himself as not only willing but anxious, – judging by the frequency and length of his calls, and the lavishness of his offers of the Pendleton horses and motor cars.

Between him and Mrs. Carew there sprang up at once a warm friendship based on what seemed to be a peculiarly strong attraction for each other. They walked and talked together, and even made sundry plans for the Home for Working Girls, to be carried out the following winter when Jimmy should be in Boston. Jamie, too, came in for a good measure of attention, nor was Sadie Dean forgotten. Sadie, as Mrs. Carew plainly showed, was to be regarded as if she were quite one of the family; and Mrs. Carew was careful to see that she had full share in any plans for merrymaking.

Nor did Jimmy always come alone with his offers for entertainment. More and more frequently John Pendleton appeared with him. Rides and drives and picnics were planned and carried out, and long delightful afternoons were spent over books and fancy-work on the Harrington veranda.

Pollyanna was delighted. Not only were her paying guests being kept from any possibilities of ennui and homesickness, but her good friends, the Carews, were becoming delightfully acquainted with her other good friends, the Pendletons. So, like a mother hen with a brood of chickens, she hovered over the veranda meetings, and did everything in her power to keep the group together and happy.

Neither the Carews nor the Pendletons, however, were at all satisfied to have Pollyanna merely an onlooker in their pastimes, and very strenuously they urged her to join them. They would not take no for an answer, indeed, and Pollyanna very frequently found the way opened for her.

“Just as if we were going to have you poked up in this hot kitchen frosting cake!” Jamie scolded one day, after he had penetrated the fastnesses of her domain. “It is a perfectly glorious morning, and we’re all going over to the Gorge and take our luncheon. And YOU are going with us.”

“But, Jamie, I can’t – indeed I can’t,” refused Pollyanna.

“Why not? You won’t have dinner to get for us, for we sha’n’t be here to eat it.”

“But there’s the – the luncheon.”

“Wrong again. We’ll have the luncheon with us, so you CAN’t stay home to get that. Now what’s to hinder your going along WITH the luncheon, eh?”

“Why, Jamie, I – I can’t. There’s the cake to frost —”

“Don’t want it frosted.”

“And the dusting —”

“Don’t want it dusted.”

“And the ordering to do for to-morrow.”

“Give us crackers and milk. We’d lots rather have you and crackers and milk than a turkey dinner and not you.”

“But I can’t begin to tell you the things I’ve got to do to-day.”

“Don’t want you to begin to tell me,” retorted Jamie, cheerfully. “I want you to stop telling me. Come, put on your bonnet. I saw Betty in the dining-room, and she says she’ll put our luncheon up. Now hurry.”

“Why, Jamie, you ridiculous boy, I can’t go,” laughed Pollyanna, holding feebly back, as he tugged at her dress-sleeve. “I can’t go to that picnic with you!”

But she went. She went not only then, but again and again. She could not help going, indeed, for she found arrayed against her not only Jamie, but Jimmy and Mr. Pendleton, to say nothing of Mrs. Carew and Sadie Dean, and even Aunt Polly herself.

“And of course I AM glad to go,” she would sigh happily, when some dreary bit of work was taken out of her hands in spite of all protesting. “But, surely, never before were there any boarders like mine – teasing for crackers-and-milk and cold things; and never before was there a boarding mistress like me – running around the country after this fashion!”

The climax came when one day John Pendleton (and Aunt Polly never ceased to exclaim because it WAS John Pendleton) – suggested that they all go on a two weeks’ camping trip to a little lake up among the mountains forty miles from Beldingsville.

The idea was received with enthusiastic approbation by everybody except Aunt Polly. Aunt Polly said, privately, to Pollyanna, that it was all very good and well and desirable that John Pendleton should have gotten out of the sour, morose aloofness that had been his state for so many years, but that it did not necessarily follow that it was equally desirable that he should be trying to turn himself into a twenty-year-old boy again; and that was what, in her opinion, he seemed to be doing now! Publicly she contented herself with saying coldly that SHE certainly should not go on any insane camping trip to sleep on damp ground and eat bugs and spiders, under the guise of “fun” [112] under the guise of “fun” – ( разг. ) под видом развлечений , nor did she think it a sensible thing for anybody over forty to do.

If John Pendleton felt any wound from this shaft, he made no sign. Certainly there was no diminution of apparent interest and enthusiasm on his part, and the plans for the camping expedition came on apace, for it was unanimously decided that, even if Aunt Polly would not go, that was no reason why the rest should not.

“And Mrs. Carew will be all the chaperon we need, anyhow,” Jimmy had declared airily.

For a week, therefore, little was talked of but tents, food supplies, cameras, and fishing tackle, and little was done that was not a preparation in some way for the trip.

“And let’s make it the real thing,” proposed Jimmy, eagerly, “– yes, even to Mrs. Chilton’s bugs and spiders,” he added, with a merry smile straight into that lady’s severely disapproving eyes. “None of your log-cabin-central-dining-room idea for us! We want real camp-fires with potatoes baked in the ashes, and we want to sit around and tell stories and roast corn on a stick.”