Pollyanna Grows Up | Page 2

stay--here."
"Here!" Della Wetherby laughed merrily, and threw up her hands; then,
abruptly, her voice and manner changed. She regarded her sister with
grave, tender eyes. "Ruth, dear, I couldn't--I just couldn't live in this
house. You know I couldn't," she finished 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