The sky was darkening fast with what appeared to be an approaching thunder shower when Pollyanna hurried down the hill from John Pendleton's house. Half-way home she met Nancy with an umbrella. By that time, however, the clouds had shifted their position and the shower was not so imminent.
"Guess it's goin' 'round ter the north," announced Nancy, eyeing the sky critically. I thought 'twas, all the time, but Miss Polly wanted me ter come with this. She was WORRIED about ye!"
"Was she?" murmured Pollyanna abstractedly, eyeing the clouds in her turn.
Nancy sniffed a little.
"You don't seem ter notice what I said," she observed aggrievedly. "I said yer aunt was WORRIED about ye!"
"Oh," sighed Pollyanna, remembering suddenly the question she was so soon to ask her aunt. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare her."
"Well, I'm glad," retorted Nancy, unexpectedly. "I am, I am."
Pollyanna stared.
"GLAD that Aunt Polly was scared about me! Why, Nancy, THAT isn't the way to play the game--to be glad for things like that!" she objected.
"There wa'n't no game in it," retorted Nancy. "Never thought of it. YOU don't seem ter sense what it means ter have Miss Polly WORRIED about ye, child!"
"Why, it means worried--and worried is horrid--to feel," maintained Pollyanna. "What else can it mean?"
Nancy tossed her head.
"Well, I'll tell ye what it means. It means she's at last gettin' down somewheres near human--like folks; an' that she ain't jest doin' her duty by ye all the time."
"Why, Nancy," demurred the scandalized Pollyanna, "Aunt Polly always does her duty. She--she's a very dutiful woman!"
Unconsciously Pollyanna repeated John Pendleton's words of half an hour before.
Nancy chuckled.
"You're right she is--and she always was, I guess! But she's somethin' more, now, since you came."
Pollyanna's face changed. Her brows drew into a troubled frown.
"There, that's what I was going to ask you, Nancy," she sighed.
"Do you think Aunt Polly likes to have me here? Would she mind--if if I wasn't here any more?"
Nancy threw a quick look into the little girl's absorbed face.
She had expected to be asked this question long before, and she had dreaded it. She had wondered how she should answer it--how she could answer it honestly without cruelly hurting the questioner. But now, NOW, in the face of the new suspicions that had become convictions by the afternoon's umbrella-sending--Nancy only welcomed the question with open arms. She was sure that, with a clean conscience to-day, she could set the love-hungry little girl's heart at rest.
"Likes ter have ye here? Would she miss ye if ye wa'n't here?" cried Nancy, indignantly. "As if that wa'n't jest what I was tellin' of ye! Didn't she send me posthaste with an umbrella 'cause she see a little cloud in the sky? Didn't she make me tote yer things all down-stairs, so you could have the pretty room you wanted? Why, Miss Pollyanna, when ye remember how at first she hated ter have--"
With a choking cough Nancy pulled herself up just in time.
"And it ain't jest things I can put my fingers on, neither," rushed on Nancy, breathlessly. "It's little ways she has, that shows how you've been softenin' her up an' mellerin' her down--the cat, and the dog, and the way she speaks ter me, and oh, lots o' things. Why, Miss Pollyanna, there ain't no tellin' how she'd miss ye--if ye wa'n't here," finished Nancy, speaking with an enthusiastic certainty that was meant to hide the perilous admission she had almost made before. Even then she was not quite prepared for the sudden joy that illumined Pollyanna's face.
"Oh, Nancy, I'm so glad--glad--glad! You don't know how glad I am that Aunt Polly--wants me!"
"As if I'd leave her now!" thought Pollyanna, as she climbed the stairs to her room a little later. "I always knew I wanted to live with Aunt Polly--but I reckon maybe I didn't know quite how much I wanted Aunt Polly--to want to live with ME!"
The task of telling John Pendleton of her decision would not be an easy one, Pollyanna knew, and she dreaded it. She was very fond of John Pendleton, and she was very sorry for him--because he seemed to be so sorry for himself. She was sorry, too, for the long, lonely life that had made him so unhappy; and she was grieved that it had been because of her mother that he had spent those dreary years. She pictured the great gray house as it would be after its master was well again, with its silent rooms, its littered floors, its disordered desk; and her heart ached for his loneliness. She wished that somewhere, some one might be found who--And it was at this point that she sprang to her feet with a little cry of joy at the thought that had come to her.
