Aunt Polly

“ Aunt Polly turned with a faint surprise in her eyes; but Pollyanna was looking the other way.
"Are you going to get up now?" she asked a little wearily.
"Why, y-yes," murmured Aunt Polly, still with that faint surprise in her eyes. "What's the matter, Pollyanna? Are you especially tired?"
"Yes, I am tired this morning. I didn't sleep well, either. I hate not to sleep. Things always plague so in the night, when you wake up."
"I guess I know that," fretted Aunt Polly. "I didn't sleep a wink after two o'clock myself. And there's that roof! ”

“ Pollyanna never doubted now that John Pendleton was her Aunt Polly's one-time lover; and with all the strength of her loving, loyal heart, she wished she could in some way bring happiness into their to her mind—miserably lonely lives. ”

“ At her aunt's look of shocked anger, Pollyanna corrected herself at once.
"Why, no, of course you didn't, Aunt Polly!" she hurried on, with a hot blush. "I forgot; rich folks never have to have them. But you see sometimes I kind of forget that you are rich—up here in this room, you know." ”

“ I reckon folks'll be glad when they do see it—and surprised, too, 'cause you've hid it so long. Why, Aunt Polly, I'll make you so pretty everybody'll just love to look at you!”
“Pollyanna!” gasped a stifled but shocked voice from a veil of hair. “I—I'm sure I don't know why I'm letting you do this silly thing.”
“Why, Aunt Polly, I should think you'd be glad to have folks like to look at you! Don't you like to look at pretty things? I'm ever so much happier when I look at pretty folks, 'cause when I look at the other kind I'm so sorry for them.” ”

“ It was certainly a hard day, and by night Pollyanna looked pale and worn out. This, too, was a source of worriment to Aunt Polly.
"Dear me, child, you look tired to death!" she fumed. "What we're going to do I don't know. I suppose you'll be sick next!"
"Nonsense, auntie! I'm not sick a bit," declared Pollyanna, dropping herself with a sigh on to the couch. "But I am tired. My! how good this couch feels! I'm glad I'm tired, after all—it's so nice to rest."
Aunt Polly turned with an impatient gesture.
"Glad—glad—glad! Of course you're glad, Pollyanna. You're always glad for everything. ”

“ In reality you are, neither of you, grown up; in reality Polly is quite a child, and you, my wise little Nell, are very little more. I have offended your aunt, Mrs. Cameron, as it is, and what will she say if I yield to you on this point? Still, still——”
“Oh, father, don’t mind what that tiresome Aunt Maria says or thinks on any subject,” said Polly. “Why should we mind her, she wasn’t mother’s real sister. We scarcely know her at all, and she scarcely knows us. We don’t like her, and we are sure she doesn’t like us. Why should she spoil our lives, and prevent our helping you? ”

“ Most Aunt Pollies have been the exemplars and promulgators of "single blessedness"—not such was she! But more of this anon. Aunt Polly was the only sister of my father, who often spoke of her affectionately; but would end his remark with "poor Polly! so nervous—so unlike her self-possessed and beautiful mother"—whose memory he devoutly revered. Children are not destitute of the curiosity native to the human mind, and we often teased papa about a visit from Aunt Polly, who, he replied, never left home ”

“ "Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to—to live." ”

“ Is my Aunt Polly rich, Nancy?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“I'm so glad. It must be perfectly lovely to have lots of money. I never knew any one that did have, only the Whites—they're some rich. They have carpets in every room and ice-cream Sundays. Does Aunt Polly have ice-cream Sundays?”
Nancy shook her head. Her lips twitched. She threw a merry look into Timothy's eyes.
“No, Miss. Your aunt don't like ice-cream, I guess; leastways I never saw it on her table.”
Pollyanna's face fell. ”

“ It would be hard to draw a picture of Aunt Polly in words, so good as the reader's fancy will supply. There was nothing peculiar in her tall, stout figure; in her well developed features—something between the Grecian and the Roman—in her complexion, which one could see had faded from a glowing brunette to a pale Scotch snuff color. ”

“ It was that afternoon that Pollyanna, coming down from her attic room, met her aunt on the stairway.
"Why, Aunt Polly, how perfectly lovely!" she cried. "You were coming up to see me! Come right in. I love company," she finished, scampering up the stairs and throwing her door wide open.
Now Miss Polly had not been intending to call on her niece. She had been planning to look for a certain white wool shawl in the cedar chest near the east window. ”

“ This was the family circle in which Polly Adams had spent the thirteen happy years of her life, respecting and loving her father, adoring her mother, and continually coming in conflict with Aunt Jane. And Polly herself? Like countless other girls, she was good and bad, naughty and lovable by turns, now yielding to violent fits of temper, now going into the depths of penitence for them; but always, in the inmost recesses of her childish soul, possessed with a firm resolve to be as good a woman as her mother was before her. ”

“ The little girl dropped to her toes, and danced lightly up and down.
“No, only when I love folks so I just can't help it! I saw you from my window, Aunt Polly, and I got to thinking how you WEREN'T a Ladies' Aider, and you were my really truly aunt; and you looked so good I just had to come down and hug you!”
The bent old man turned his back suddenly. Miss Polly attempted a frown—with not her usual success.
“Pollyanna, you—I Thomas, that will do for this morning. I think you understand—about those rose-bushes,” she said stiffly. Then she turned and walked rapidly away. ”

“ The freckles had not disappeared, but still the buttermilk had done its work, and Polly's face presented every appearance of having been varnished, for, thanks to the polishing which it had undergone, it shone like a new copper tea-kettle. For an instant, tears of mortification stood in the gray eyes; then Polly's sense of the ridiculous had its way, and, dropping into a chair, she laughed till her cheeks were crimson under their metallic surface, and her lashes were damp with hysterical tears.
"What in the world are you laughing at, Polly?" asked Aunt Jane's voice at her door. ”

“ Why, my Aunt Polly is the nicest lady in the world—now that my mama has gone to be a Heaven angel. And there's rooms—heaps of 'em," she continued, springing to her feet, and tugging at his arm. "It's an awful big house. Maybe, though," she added a little anxiously, as they hurried on, "maybe you'll have to sleep in the attic room. ”

“ Now, as Aunt Polly was a middle-aged woman when she left Connecticut, and had lived at the Elm-tree tavern twenty-five years, this idea of settling for life-which, of course, comprised a husband, who might also be landlord to that establishment—struck the young girls at once as so improbable that they both smiled. ”

“ You breathe all the time you're asleep, but you aren't living. I mean living—doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading (to myself, of course) , climbing hills, talking to Mr. Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That's what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn't living!"
Miss Polly lifted her head irritably.
"Pollyanna, you are the most extraordinary child! You will be allowed a proper amount of playtime, of course. ”

“ When the house was reached, Pollyanna unhesitatingly piloted her companion straight into the presence of her amazed aunt.
“Oh, Aunt Polly,” she triumphed, “just look a-here! I've got something ever so much nicer, even, than Fluffy and Buffy for you to bring up. It's a real live boy. He won't mind a bit sleeping in the attic, at first, you know, and he says he'll work ”

“ When his mother was going home, she said to Aunt Polly: “Little Boy Blue likes to play, but he likes to work, too. So be sure to give him some work to do every day.”
“Very well,” said Aunt Polly. And so by-and-by Aunt Polly went to find Little Boy Blue. And she said to him: “Dear Little Boy Blue, what can you do to help?” He thought a minute, and then he said: “I can eat apples to see if they are ripe. And I can pull the roses in the garden, if you have too many.”
“The apples are not ripe, and I have just enough roses in the garden,” said Aunt Polly. “Can you drive the cows out of the corn?” ”

“ Pollyanna laughed.
“Why, I don't know. I reckon perhaps there are,” she admitted. “I like to do 'most everything that's LIVING. Of course I don't like the other things very well—sewing, and reading out loud, and all that. But THEY aren't LIVING.”
“No? What are they, then?”
“Aunt Polly says they're 'learning to live,'” sighed Pollyanna, with a rueful smile.
The doctor smiled now—a little queerly. ”

“ Your choice has made an old man very happy, sir. For a thoroughly high-bred tone, for intelligence, indeed, I may say, brilliancy of mind, and for every womanly grace and virtue, I have seen no one to approach her since your mother's death. I should have loved little Polly very much, but your choice has been a higher one—more refined—more refined. For, strictly between ourselves, my dear boy, our dear little Polly has, now and then, just a thought too much of your Aunt Maria about her. ”

“ I'm sure. I should. It isn't nice to be under obligations that you
can't pay. I know how it is. That's why I so wish I could help Aunt
Polly out—after all she's done for me!"
"But you are helping her this summer."
Pollyanna lifted her eyebrows.
"Yes, I'm keeping summer boarders. I look it, don't I?" she challenged, with a flourish of her hands toward her surroundings. "Surely, never was a boarding-house mistress's task quite like mine! And you should have heard Aunt Polly's dire predictions of what summer boarders would be," she chuckled irrepressibly. ”

“ Pollyanna's face fell.
“Oh, but Aunt Polly, HERS will last. She can always be sick and have things, you know; but his is just a broken leg, and legs don't last—I mean, broken ones. He's had it a whole week now.”
“Yes, I remember. I heard Mr. John Pendleton had met with an accident,” said Miss Polly, a little stiffly; “but—I do not care to be sending jelly to John Pendleton, Pollyanna.”
“I know, he is cross—outside,” admitted Pollyanna, sadly, “so I suppose you don't like him. But I wouldn't say 'twas you sent it. I'd say 'twas me. I like him. I'd be glad to send him jelly.” ”

“ And Aunt Polly hurried out to speak to him, while I took my great bunch of golden-rod, which already drooped a little, and followed her, with Mrs. Snow, who confided to me that the captain's nephew Jacob had offered to Polly that summer she was over there, and she never could see why she didn't have him: only love goes where it is sent, and Polly wasn't one to marry for what she could get if she didn't like the man. ”

“ The girl stirred restlessly, and half moved as if to go.
"Oh, then you can see both of them," breathed Pollyanna, unutterable longing in her face. "Oh, how glad you must be! For there just isn't anybody, is there, that really CARES and notices quite so much as fathers and mothers. You see I know, for I had a father until I was eleven years old; but, for a mother, I had Ladies' Aiders for ever so long, till Aunt Polly took me. Ladies' Aiders are lovely, but of course they aren't like mothers, or even Aunt Pollys ”

“ Mary-Clare now turned and came close to Aunt Polly, resting her folded arms on the thin little knees––“It has come to me, dear, that things are not fixed right and when they are not, it won’t do any good to keep on acting as if they were. Being married to 115 Larry could never make it right for me to do what seems to me wrong. And oh! Aunt Polly, I wish that I could make you understand. Do try to understand, dear, there is a sacred place in my soul, and I just do believe it is in all women’s souls if they dared to say so––that no one, not even a husband, has a right to claim. ”

“ Aunt Polly is all stirred up over it. You see, she wants Uncle Tom to have what he wants, only she wants him to want what she wants him to want. See?"
Mrs. Carew laughed suddenly. ”

“ As Aunt Polly walked she looked here, and she looked there. And she called:
“Little Boy Blue! Come blow your horn.
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.”
Where do you think Aunt Polly found him? When the head-farmer asked her, “Where’s the little boy that looks after the sheep?” Aunt Polly said: “He’s under the haycock, fast asleep.”
“Shall we go wake him?” said the head-farmer.
“No, no; let him lie,” said Aunt Polly. “For if we should wake him, ‘he’d cry, cry, cry.’”
You see Little Boy Blue got up so early, he grew sleepy. And the sun was hot. And the haymow made a soft pillow. ”

“ I'm as bad as the Man. And he is dirty, too, isn't he?—I mean, the boy is—just like Fluffy and Buffy were when you took them in. But I reckon he'll improve all right by washing, just as they did, and—Oh, I 'most forgot again,” she broke off with a laugh. “This is Jimmy Bean, Aunt Polly.”
“Well, what is he doing here?”
“Why, Aunt Polly, I just told you!” Pollyanna's eyes were wide with surprise. “He's for you. I brought him home—so he could live here, you know. He wants a home and folks. ”