Pollyanna Grows Up | Page 2

gently.
Mrs. Carew stirred irritably.
"I'm sure I don't see why not," she fenced.
Della Wetherby shook her head.
"Yes, you do, dear. You know I'm entirely out of sympathy with it all: the gloom, the lack of aim, the insistence on misery and bitterness."
"But I AM miserable and bitter."
"You ought not to be."
"Why not? What have I to make me otherwise?"
Della Wetherby gave an impatient gesture.
"Ruth, look here," she challenged. "You're thirty-three years old. You have good health--or would have, if you treated yourself properly--and you certainly have an abundance of time and a superabundance of money. Surely anybody would say you ought to find SOMETHING to do this glorious morning besides sitting moped up in this tomb-like house with instructions to the maid that you'll see no one."
"But I don't WANT to see anybody."
"Then I'd MAKE myself want to."
Mrs. Carew sighed wearily and turned away her head.
"Oh, Della, why won't you ever understand? I'm not like you. I can't--forget."
A swift pain crossed the younger woman's face.
"You mean--Jamie, I suppose. I don't forget--that, dear. I couldn't, of course. But moping won't help us--find him."
"As if I hadn't TRIED to find him, for eight long years--and by something besides moping," flashed Mrs. Carew, indignantly, with a sob in her voice.
"Of course you have, dear," soothed the other, quickly; "and we shall keep on hunting, both of us, till we do find him--or die. But THIS sort of thing doesn't help."
"But I don't want to do--anything else," murmured Ruth Carew, drearily.
For a moment there was silence. The younger woman sat regarding her sister with troubled, disapproving eyes.
"Ruth," she said, at last, with a touch of exasperation, "forgive me, but--are you always going to be like this? You're widowed, I'll admit; but your married life lasted only a year, and your husband was much older than yourself. You were little more than a child at the time, and that one short year can't seem much more than a dream now. Surely that ought not to embitter your whole life!"
"No, oh, no," murmured Mrs. Carew, still drearily.
"Then ARE you going to be always like this?"
"Well, of course, if I could find Jamie--"
"Yes, yes, I know; but, Ruth, dear, isn't there anything in the world but Jamie--to make you ANY happy?"
"There doesn't seem to be, that I can think of," sighed Mrs. Carew, indifferently.
"Ruth!" ejaculated her sister, stung into something very like anger. Then suddenly she laughed. "Oh, Ruth, Ruth, I'd like to give you a dose of Pollyanna. I don't know any one who needs it more!"
Mrs. Carew stiffened a little.
"Well, what pollyanna may be I don't know, but whatever it is, I don't want it," she retorted sharply, nettled in her turn. "This isn't your beloved Sanatorium, and I'm not your patient to be dosed and bossed, please remember."
Della Wetherby's eyes danced, but her lips remained unsmiling.
"Pollyanna isn't a medicine, my dear," she said demurely, "--though I have heard some people call her a tonic. Pollyanna is a little girl."
"A child? Well, how should I know," retorted the other, still aggrievedly. "You have your 'belladonna,' so I'm sure I don't see why not 'pollyanna.' Besides, you're always recommending something for me to take, and you distinctly said 'dose'--and dose usually means medicine, of a sort."
"Well, Pollyanna IS a medicine--of a sort," smiled Della. "Anyway, the Sanatorium doctors all declare that she's better than any medicine they can give. She's a little girl, Ruth, twelve or thirteen years old, who was at the Sanatorium all last summer and most of the winter. I didn't see her but a month or two, for she left soon after I arrived. But that was long enough for me to come fully under her spell. Besides, the whole Sanatorium is still talking Pollyanna, and playing her game."
"GAME!"
"Yes," nodded Della, with a curious smile. "Her 'glad game.' I'll never forget my first introduction to it. One feature of her treatment was particularly disagreeable and even painful. It came every Tuesday morning, and very soon after my arrival it fell to my lot to give it to her. I was dreading it, for I knew from past experience with other children what to expect: fretfulness and tears, if nothing worse. To my unbounded amazement she greeted me with a smile and said she was glad to see me; and, if you'll believe it, there was never so much as a whimper from her lips through the whole ordeal, though I knew I was hurting her cruelly.
"I fancy I must have said something that showed my surprise, for she explained earnestly: 'Oh, yes, I used to feel that way, too, and I did dread it so, till I happened to think 'twas just like Nancy's wash-days, and I could be gladdest of all on TUESDAYS, 'cause there wouldn't be another one for a whole