POLLYANNA (Completed)

Chapter 15- DR.CHILTON

"If you please, sir, here--here's a little girl with some jelly. The doctor said I was to--to bring her in."

The next moment Pollyanna found herself alone with a very cross-looking man lying flat on his back in bed.

"See here, didn't I say--" began an angry voice. "Oh, it's you!" it broke off not very graciously, as Pollyanna advanced toward the bed.

"Yes, sir," smiled Pollyanna. "Oh, I'm so glad they let me in! You see, at first the lady 'most took my jelly, and I was so afraid I wasn't going to see you at all. Then the doctor came, and he said I might. Wasn't he lovely to let me see you?"

In spite of himself the man's lips twitched into a smile; but all he said was "Humph!"

"And I've brought you some jelly," resumed Pollyanna; "--calf's-foot. I hope you like it?" There was a rising inflection in her voice.

"Never ate it." The fleeting smile had gone, and the scowl had come back to the man's face.

For a brief instant Pollyanna's countenance showed disappointment; but it cleared as she set the bowl of jelly down.

"Didn't you? Well, if you didn't, then you can't know you DON'T like it, anyhow, can you? So I reckon I'm glad you haven't, after all. Now, if you knew--"

"Yes, yes; well, there's one thing I know all right, and that is that I'm flat on my back right here this minute, and that I'm liable to stay here--till doomsday, I guess."

Pollyanna looked shocked.

"Oh, no! It couldn't be till doomsday, you know, when the angel Gabriel blows his trumpet, unless it should come quicker than we think it will--oh, of course, I know the Bible says it may come quicker than we think, but I don't think it will--that is, of course I believe the Bible; but I mean I don't think it will come as much quicker as it would if it should come now, and--"

John Pendleton laughed suddenly--and aloud. The nurse, coming in at that moment, heard the laugh, and beat a hurried--but a very silent--retreat. He had the air of a frightened cook who, seeing the danger of a breath of cold air striking a half-done cake, hastily shuts the oven door.

"Aren't you getting a little mixed?" asked John Pendleton of Pollyanna.

The little girl laughed.

"Maybe. But what I mean is, that legs don't last--broken ones, you know--like lifelong invalids, same as Mrs. Snow has got. So yours won't last till doomsday at all. I should think you could be glad of that."

"Oh, I am," retorted the man grimly.

"And you didn't break but one. You can be glad 'twasn't two." Pollyanna was warming to her task.

"Of course! So fortunate," sniffed the man, with uplifted eyebrows; "looking at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might be glad I wasn't a centipede and didn't break fifty!"

Pollyanna chuckled.

"Oh, that's the best yet," she crowed. "I know what a centipede is; they've got lots of legs. And you can be glad--"

"Oh, of course," interrupted the man, sharply, all the old bitterness coming back to his voice; "I can be glad, too, for all the rest, I suppose--the nurse, and the doctor, and that confounded woman in the kitchen!"

"Why, yes, sir--only think how bad 'twould be if you DIDN'T have them!"

"Well, I--eh?" he demanded sharply.

"Why, I say, only think how bad it would be if you didn't have 'em--and you lying here like this!"

"As if that wasn't the very thing that was at the bottom of the whole matter," retorted the man, testily, "because I am lying here like this! And yet you expect me to say I'm glad because of a fool woman who disarranges the whole house and calls it 'regulating,' and a man who aids and abets her in it, and calls it 'nursing,' to say nothing of the doctor who eggs 'em both on--and the whole bunch of them, meanwhile, expecting me to pay them for it, and pay them well, too!"