POLLYANNA GROWS UP (Completed)

Chapter 13- A WAITING AND A WINNING

It was a delightful plan. Pollyanna had it entirely formulated in about five minutes; then she told Mrs. Carew. Mrs. Carew did not think it was a delightful plan, and she said so very distinctly.

"Oh, but I'm sure THEY'LL think it is," argued Pollyanna, in reply to Mrs. Carew's objections. "And just think how easy we can do it! The tree is just as it was--except for the presents, and we can get more of those. It won't be so very long till just New Year's Eve; and only think how glad she'll be to come! Wouldn't YOU be, if you hadn't had anything for Christmas only blistered feet and chicken pie?"

"Dear, dear, what an impossible child you are!" frowned Mrs. Carew. "Even yet it doesn't seem to occur to you that we don't know this young person's name."

"So we don't! And isn't it funny, when I feel that I know HER so well?" smiled Pollyanna. "You see, we had such a good talk in the Garden that day, and she told me all about how lonesome she was, and that she thought the lonesomest place in the world was in a crowd in a big city, because folks didn't think nor notice. Oh, there was one that noticed; but he noticed too much, she said, and he hadn't ought to notice her any--which is kind of funny, isn't it, when you come to think of it. But anyhow, he came for her there in the Garden to go somewhere with him, and she wouldn't go, and he was a real handsome gentleman, too--until he began to look so cross, just at the last. Folks aren't so pretty when they're cross, are they? Now there was a lady to-day looking at bows, and she said--well, lots of things that weren't nice, you know. And SHE didn't look pretty, either, after--after she began to talk. But you will let me have the tree New Year's Eve, won't you, Mrs. Carew?--and invite this girl who sells bows, and Jamie? He's better, you know, now, and he COULD come. Of course Jerry would have to wheel him--but then, we'd want Jerry, anyway."

"Oh, of course, JERRY!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew in ironic scorn. "But why stop with Jerry? I'm sure Jerry has hosts of friends who would love to come. And--"

"Oh, Mrs. Carew, MAY I?" broke in Pollyanna, in uncontrollable delight. "Oh, how good, GOOD, GOOD you are! I've so wanted--" But Mrs. Carew fairly gasped aloud in surprise and dismay.

"No, no, Pollyanna, I--" she began, protestingly. But Pollyanna, entirely mistaking the meaning of her interruption, plunged in again in stout championship.

"Indeed you ARE good--just the bestest ever; and I sha'n't let you say you aren't. Now I reckon I'll have a party all right! There's Tommy Dolan and his sister Jennie, and the two Macdonald children, and three girls whose names I don't know that live under the Murphys, and a whole lot more, if we have room for 'em. And only think how glad they'll be when I tell 'em! Why, Mrs. Carew, seems to me as if I never knew anything so perfectly lovely in all my life--and it's all your doings! Now mayn't I begin right away to invite 'em--so they'll KNOW what's coming to 'em?"

And Mrs. Carew, who would not have believed such a thing possible, heard herself murmuring a faint "yes," which, she knew, bound her to the giving of a Christmas-tree party on New Year's Eve to a dozen children from Murphy's Alley and a young salesgirl whose name she did not know.

Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's memory was still lingering a young girl's "Sometimes I wonder there don't some of 'em think of helpin' the girls BEFORE they go wrong." Perhaps in her ears was still ringing Pollyanna's story of that same girl who had found a crowd in a big city the loneliest place in the world, yet who had refused to go with the handsome man that had "noticed too much." Perhaps in Mrs. Carew's heart was the undefined hope that somewhere in it all lay the peace she had so longed for. Perhaps it was a little of all three combined with utter helplessness in the face of Pollyanna's amazing twisting of her irritated sarcasm into the wide-sweeping hospitality of a willing hostess. Whatever it was, the thing was done; and at once Mrs. Carew found herself caught into a veritable whirl of plans and plottings, the center of which was always Pollyanna and the party.