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

The start was not made at once, however. Even when it was made, it must have been a false one, for at the end of half an hour the whole page was nothing but a jumble of scratched-out lines, with only a few words here and there left to tell the tale.

At this juncture Aunt Polly came into the room. She turned tired eyes upon her niece.

“Well, Pollyanna, what ARE you up to now?” she demanded.

Pollyanna laughed and colored guiltily.

“Nothing much, auntie. Anyhow, it doesn’t look as if it were much – yet,” she admitted, with a rueful smile. “Besides, it’s a secret, and I’m not going to tell it yet.”

“Very well; suit yourself,” sighed Aunt Polly. “But I can tell you right now that if you’re trying to make anything different out of those mortgage papers Mr. Hart left, it’s useless. I’ve been all over them myself twice.”

“No, dear, it isn’t the papers. It’s a whole heap nicer than any papers ever could be,” crowed Pollyanna triumphantly, turning back to her work. In Pollyanna’s eyes suddenly had risen a glowing vision of what it might be, with that three thousand dollars once hers.

For still another half-hour Pollyanna wrote and scratched, and chewed her pencils; then, with her courage dulled, but not destroyed, she gathered up her papers and pencils and left the room.

“I reckon maybe I’ll do better by myself up-stairs,” she was thinking as she hurried through the hall. “I THOUGHT I ought to do it at a desk – being literary work, so – but anyhow, the desk didn’t help me any this morning. I’ll try the window seat in my room.”

The window seat, however, proved to be no more inspiring, judging by the scratched and re-scratched pages that fell from Pollyanna’s hands; and at the end of another half-hour Pollyanna discovered suddenly that it was time to get dinner.

“Well, I’m glad ’tis, anyhow,” she sighed to herself. “I’d a lot rather get dinner than do this. Not but that I WANT to do this, of course; only I’d no idea ’twas such an awful job – just a story, so!”

During the following month Pollyanna worked faithfully, doggedly, but she soon found that “just a story, so” was indeed no small matter to accomplish [129] was indeed no small matter to accomplish – ( разг. ) оказалось делом непростым . Pollyanna, however, was not one to set her hand to the plow and look back. Besides, there was that three-thousand-dollar prize, or even any of the others, if she should not happen to win the first one! Of course even one hundred dollars was something! So day after day she wrote and erased, and rewrote, until finally the story, such as it was, lay completed before her. Then, with some misgivings, it must be confessed, she took the manuscript to Milly Snow to be typewritten.

“It reads all right – that is, it makes sense,” mused Pollyanna doubtfully, as she hurried along toward the Snow cottage; “and it’s a real nice story about a perfectly lovely girl. But there’s something somewhere that isn’t quite right about it, I’m afraid. Anyhow, I don’t believe I’d better count too much on the first prize; then I won’t be too much disappointed when I get one of the littler ones.”

Pollyanna always thought of Jimmy when she went to the Snows’, for it was at the side of the road near their cottage that she had first seen him as a forlorn little runaway lad from the Orphans’ Home years before. She thought of him again to-day, with a little catch of her breath. Then, with the proud lifting of her head that always came now with the second thought of Jimmy, she hurried up the Snows’ doorsteps and rang the bell.

As was usually the case, the Snows had nothing but the warmest of welcomes for Pollyanna; and also as usual it was not long before they were talking of the game: in no home in Beldingsville was the ‘glad game’ more ardently played than in the Snows’.

“Well, and how are you getting along?” asked Pollyanna, when she had finished the business part of her call.

“Splendidly!” beamed Milly Snow. “This is the third job I’ve got this week. Oh, Miss Pollyanna, I’m so glad you had me take up typewriting, for you see I CAN do that right at home! And it’s all owing to you.”

“Nonsense!” disclaimed Pollyanna, merrily.

“But it is. In the first place, I couldn’t have done it anyway if it hadn’t been for the game – making mother so much better, you know, that I had some time to myself. And then, at the very first, you suggested typewriting, and helped me to buy a machine. I should like to know if that doesn’t come pretty near owing it all to you!”

But once again Pollyanna objected. This time she was interrupted by Mrs. Snow from her wheel-chair by the window. And so earnestly and gravely did Mrs. Snow speak, that Pollyanna, in spite of herself, could but hear what she had to say.

“Listen, child, I don’t think you know quite what you’ve done. But I wish you could! There’s a little look in your eyes, my dear, to-day, that I don’t like to see there. You are plagued and worried over something, I know. I can see it. And I don’t wonder: your uncle’s death, your aunt’s condition, everything – I won’t say more about that. But there’s something I do want to say, my dear, and you must let me say it, for I can’t bear to see that shadow in your eyes without trying to drive it away by telling you what you’ve done for me, for this whole town, and for countless other people everywhere.”

“MRS. SNOW!” protested Pollyanna, in genuine distress.

“Oh, I mean it, and I know what I’m talking about,” nodded the invalid, triumphantly. “To begin with, look at me. Didn’t you find me a fretful, whining creature who never by any chance wanted what she had until she found what she didn’t have? And didn’t you open my eyes by bringing me three kinds of things so I’d HAVE to have what I wanted, for once?”

“Oh, Mrs. Snow, was I really ever quite so – impertinent as that?” murmured Pollyanna, with a painful blush.

“It wasn’t impertinent,” objected Mrs. Snow, stoutly. “You didn’t MEAN it as impertinence – and that made all the difference in the world [130] that made all the difference in the world – ( разг. ) в том-то и разница . You didn’t preach, either, my dear. If you had, you’d never have got me to playing the game, nor anybody else, I fancy. But you did get me to playing it – and see what it’s done for me, and for Milly! Here I am so much better that I can sit in a wheel-chair and go anywhere on this floor in it. That means a whole lot when it comes to waiting on yourself, and giving those around you a chance to breathe – meaning Milly, in this case. And the doctor says it’s all owing to the game. Then there’s others, quantities of others, right in this town, that I’m hearing of all the time. Nellie Mahoney broke her wrist and was so glad it wasn’t her leg that she didn’t mind the wrist at all. Old Mrs. Tibbits has lost her hearing, but she’s so glad ‘tisn’t her eyesight that she’s actually happy. Do you remember cross-eyed Joe that they used to call Cross Joe, because of his temper? Nothing went to suit him either, any more than it did me. Well, somebody’s taught him the game, they say, and made a different man of him. And listen, dear. It’s not only this town, but other places. I had a letter yesterday from my cousin in Massachusetts, and she told me all about Mrs. Tom Payson that used to live here. Do you remember them? They lived on the way up Pendleton Hill.”

“Yes, oh, yes, I remember them,” cried Pollyanna. “Well, they left here that winter you were in the Sanatorium and went to Massachusetts where my sister lives. She knows them well. She says Mrs. Payson told her all about you, and how your ‘glad game’ actually saved them from a divorce. And now not only do they play it themselves, but they’ve got quite a lot of others playing it down there, and THEY’RE getting still others. So you see, dear, there’s no telling where that ‘glad game’ of yours is going to stop. I wanted you to know. I thought it might help – even you to play the game sometimes; for don’t think I don’t understand, dearie, that it IS hard for you to play your own game – sometimes.”