John Pendleton greeted Pollyanna to-day with a smile.
"Well, Miss Pollyanna, I'm thinking you must be a very forgiving little person, else you wouldn't have come to see me again to-day."
"Why, Mr. Pendleton, I was real glad to come, and I'm sure I don't see why I shouldn't be, either."
"Oh, well, you know, I was pretty cross with you, I'm afraid, both the other day when you so kindly brought me the jelly, and that time when you found me with the broken leg at first. By the way, too, I don't think I've ever thanked you for that. Now I'm sure that even you would admit that you were very forgiving to come and see me, after such ungrateful treatment as that!"
Pollyanna stirred uneasily.
"But I was glad to find you--that is, I don't mean I was glad your leg was broken, of course," she corrected hurriedly.
John Pendleton smiled.
"I understand. Your tongue does get away with you once in a while, doesn't it, Miss Pollyanna? I do thank you, however; and I consider you a very brave little girl to do what you did that day. I thank you for the jelly, too," he added in a lighter voice.
"Did you like it?" asked Pollyanna with interest.
"Very much. I suppose--there isn't any more to-day that--that Aunt Polly DIDN'T send, is there?" he asked with an odd smile.
His visitor looked distressed.
"N-no, sir." She hesitated, then went on with heightened color.
"Please, Mr. Pendleton, I didn't mean to be rude the other day when I said Aunt Polly did NOT send the jelly."
There was no answer. John Pendleton was not smiling now. He was looking straight ahead of him with eyes that seemed to be gazing through and beyond the object before them. After a time he drew a long sigh and turned to Pollyanna. When he spoke his voice carried the old nervous fretfulness.
"Well, well, this will never do at all! I didn't send for you to see me moping this time. Listen! Out in the library--the big room where the telephone is, you know--you will find a carved box on the lower shelf of the big case with glass doors in the corner not far from the fireplace. That is, it'll be there if that confounded woman hasn't 'regulated' it to somewhere else! You may bring it to me. It is heavy, but not too heavy for you to carry, I think."
"Oh, I'm awfully strong," declared Pollyanna, cheerfully, as she sprang to her feet. In a minute she had returned with the box.
It was a wonderful half-hour that Pollyanna spent then. The box was full of treasures--curios that John Pendleton had picked up in years of travel--and concerning each there was some entertaining story, whether it were a set of exquisitely carved chessmen from China, or a little jade idol from India.
It was after she had heard the story about the idol that Pollyanna murmured wistfully:
"Well, I suppose it WOULD be better to take a little boy in India to bring up--one that didn't know any more than to think that God was in that doll-thing--than it would be to take Jimmy Bean, a little boy who knows God is up in the sky. Still, I can't help wishing they had wanted Jimmy Bean, too, besides the India boys."
John Pendleton did not seem to hear. Again his, eyes were staring straight before him, looking at nothing. But soon he had roused himself, and had picked up another curio to talk about.
The visit, certainly, was a delightful one, but before it was over, Pollyanna was realizing that they were talking about something besides the wonderful things in the beautiful carved box. They were talking of herself, of Nancy, of Aunt Polly, and of her daily life. They were talking, too, even of the life and home long ago in the far Western town.
Not until it was nearly time for her to go, did the man say, in a voice Pollyanna had never before heard from stern John Pendleton:
"Little girl, I want you to come to see me often. Will you? I'm lonesome, and I need you. There's another reason--and I'm going to tell you that, too. I thought, at first, after I found out who you were, the other day, that I didn't want you to come any more.
You reminded me of--of something I have tried for long years to forget. So I said to myself that I never wanted to see you again; and every day, when the doctor asked if I wouldn't let him bring you to me, I said no.
"But after a time I found I was wanting to see you so much that--that the fact that I WASN'T seeing you was making me remember all the more vividly the thing I was so wanting to forget. So now I want you to come. Will you--little girl?"
"Why, yes, Mr. Pendleton," breathed Pollyanna, her eyes luminous with sympathy for the sad-faced man lying back on the pillow before her. "I'd love to come!"
"Thank you," said John Pendleton, gently.
After supper that evening, Pollyanna, sitting on the back porch, told Nancy all about Mr. John Pendleton's wonderful carved box, and the still more wonderful things it contained.
