DR. CHILTON
The great gray pile of masonry looked very different to Pollyanna
when she made her second visit to the house of Mr. John
Pendleton. Windows were open, an elderly woman was hanging out
clothes in the back yard, and the doctor's gig stood under the
porte-cochere.
As before Pollyanna went to the side door. This time she rang the
bell--her fingers were not stiff to-day from a tight clutch on a
bunch of keys.
A familiar-looking small dog bounded up the steps to greet her,
but there was a slight delay before the woman who had been
hanging out the clothes opened the door.
"If you please, I've brought some calf's-foot jelly for Mr.
Pendleton," smiled Pollyanna.
"Thank you," said the woman, reaching for the bowl in the little
girl's hand. "Who shall I say sent it? And it's calf's-foot
jelly?"
The doctor, coming into the hall at that moment, heard the
woman's words and saw the disappointed look on Pollyanna's face.
He stepped quickly forward.
"Ah! Some calf's-foot jelly?" he asked genially. "That will be
fine! Maybe you'd like to see our patient, eh?"
"Oh, yes, sir," beamed Pollyanna; and the woman, in obedience to
a nod from the doctor, led the way down the hall at once, though
plainly with vast surprise on her face.
Behind the doctor, a young man (a trained nurse from the nearest
city) gave a disturbed exclamation.
"But, Doctor, didn't Mr. Pendleton give orders not to admit--any
one?"
"Oh, yes," nodded the doctor, imperturbably. "But I'm giving
orders now. I'll take the risk." Then he added whimsically: "You
don't know, of course; but that little girl is better than a
six-quart bottle of tonic any day. If anything or anybody can
take the grouch out of Pendleton this afternoon, she can. That's
why I sent her in."
"Who is she?"
For one brief moment the doctor hesitated.
"She's the niece of one of our best known residents. Her name is
Pollyanna Whittier. I--I don't happen to enjoy a very extensive
personal acquaintance with the little lady as yet; but lots of my
patients do--I'm thankful to say!
The nurse smiled.
"Indeed! And what are the special ingredients of this
wonder-working--tonic of hers?"
The doctor shook his head.
"I don't know. As near as I can find out it is an overwhelming,
unquenchable gladness for everything that has happened or is
going to happen. At any rate, her quaint speeches are constantly
being repeated to me, and, as near as I can make out, 'just being
glad' is the tenor of most of them. All is," he added, with
another whimsical smile, as he stepped out on to the porch, "I
wish I could prescribe her--and buy her--as I would a box of
pills;--though if there gets to be many of her in the world, you
and I might as well go to ribbon-selling and ditch-digging for
all the money we'd get out of nursing and doctoring," he laughed,
picking up the reins and stepping into the gig.
Pollyanna, meanwhile, in accordance with the doctor's orders, was
being escorted to John Pendleton's rooms.
Her way led through the great library at the end of the hall,
and, rapid as was her progress through it, Pollyanna saw at once
that great changes had taken place. The book-lined walls and the
crimson curtains were the same; but there was no litter on the
floor, no untidiness on the desk, and not so much as a grain of
dust in sight. The telephone card hung in its proper place, and
the brass andirons had been polished. One of the mysterious doors
was open, and it was toward this that the maid led the way. A
moment later Pollyanna found herself in a sumptuously furnished
bedroom while the maid was saying in a frightened voice:
"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!"
Pollyanna frowned sympathetically.
"Yes, I know. THAT part is too bad--about the money--when you've
been saving it, too, all this time."
"When--eh?"
"Saving it--buying beans and fish balls, you know. Say, DO you
like beans?--or do you like turkey better, only on account of the
sixty cents?"
"Look a-here, child, what are you talking about?"
Pollyanna smiled radiantly.
"About your money, you know--denying yourself, and saving it for
the heathen. You see, I found out about it. Why, Mr. Pendleton,
that's one of the ways I knew you weren't cross inside. Nancy
told me."
The man's jaw dropped.
"Nancy told you I was saving money for the--Well, may I inquire
who Nancy is?"
"Our Nancy. She works for Aunt Polly."
"Aunt Polly! Well, who is Aunt Polly?"
"She's Miss Polly Harrington. I live with her."
The man made a sudden movement.
"Miss--Polly--Harrington!" he breathed. "You live with--HER!"
"Yes; I'm her niece. She's taken me to bring up--on account of my
mother, you know," faltered Pollyanna, in a low voice. "She was
her sister. And after father--went to be with her and the rest of
us in Heaven, there wasn't any one left for me down here but the
Ladies' Aid; so she took me."
The man did not answer. His face, as he lay back on the pillow
now, was very white--so white that Pollyanna was frightened. She
rose uncertainly to her feet.
"I reckon maybe I'd better go now," she proposed. "I--I hope
you'll like--the jelly."
The man turned his head suddenly, and opened his eyes. There was
a curious longing in their dark depths which even Pollyanna saw,
and at which she marvelled.
"And so you are--Miss Polly Harrington's niece," he said gently.
"Yes, sir."
Still the man's dark eyes lingered on her face, until Pollyanna,
feeling vaguely restless, murmured:
"I--I suppose you know--her."
John Pendleton's lips curved in an odd smile.
"Oh, yes; I know her." He hesitated, then went on, still with
that curious smile. "But--you don't mean--you can't mean that it
was Miss Polly Harrington who sent that jelly--to me?" he said
slowly,
Pollyanna looked distressed.
"N-no, sir: she didn't. She said I must be very sure not to let
you think she did send it. But I--"
"I thought as much," vouchsafed the man, shortly, turning away
his head. And Pollyanna, still more distressed, tiptoed from the
room.
Under the porte-cochere she found the doctor waiting in his gig.
The nurse stood on the steps.
"Well, Miss Pollyanna, may I have the pleasure of seeing you
home?" asked the doctor smilingly. "I started to drive on a few
minutes ago; then it occurred to me that I'd wait for you."
"Thank you, sir. I'm glad you did. I just love to ride," beamed
Pollyanna, as he reached out his hand to help her in.
"Do you?" smiled the doctor, nodding his head in farewell to the
young man on the steps. "Well, as near as I can judge, there are
a good many things you 'love' to do--eh?" he added, as they drove
briskly away.
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.
"Does she? Well, I should think she might say--just that."
"Yes," responded Pollyanna. "But I don't see it that way at all.
I don't think you have to LEARN how to live. I didn't, anyhow."
The doctor drew a long sigh.
"After all, I'm afraid some of us--do have to, little girl," he
said. Then, for a time he was silent. Pollyanna, stealing a
glance at his face, felt vaguely sorry for him. He looked so sad.
She wished, uneasily, that she could "do something." It was this,
perhaps, that caused her to say in a timid voice:
"Dr. Chilton, I should think being a doctor would, be the very
gladdest kind of a business there was."
The doctor turned in surprise.
" 'Gladdest'!--when I see so much suffering always, everywhere I
go?" he cried.
She nodded.
"I know; but you're HELPING it--don't you see?--and of course
you're glad to help it! And so that makes you the gladdest of any
of us, all the time."
The doctor's eyes filled with sudden hot tears. The doctor's life
was a singularly lonely one. He had no wife and no home save his
two-room office in a boarding house. His profession was very dear
to him. Looking now into Pollyanna's shining eyes, he felt as if
a loving hand had been suddenly laid on his head in blessing. He
knew, too, that never again would a long day's work or a long
night's weariness be quite without that new-found exaltation that
had come to him through Pollyanna's eyes.
"God bless you, little girl," he said unsteadily. Then, with the
bright smile his patients knew and loved so well, he added: "And
I'm thinking, after all, that it was the doctor, quite as much as
his patients, that needed a draft of that tonic!" All of which
puzzled Pollyanna very much--until a chipmunk, running across the
road, drove the whole matter from her mind.
The doctor left Pollyanna at her own door, smiled at Nancy, who
was sweeping off the front porch, then drove rapidly away.
"I've had a perfectly beautiful ride with the doctor," announced
Pollyanna, bounding up the steps. "He's lovely, Nancy!"
"Is he?"
"Yes. And I told him I should think his business would be the
very gladdest one there was."
"What!--goin' ter see sick folks--an' folks what ain't sick but
thinks they is, which is worse? Nancy's face showed open
skepticism.
Pollyanna laughed gleefully.
"Yes. That's 'most what he said, too; but there is a way to be
glad, even then. Guess!"
Nancy frowned in meditation. Nancy was getting so she could play
this game of "being glad" quite successfully, she thought. She
rather enjoyed studying out Pollyanna's "posers," too, as she
called some of the little girl's questions.
"Oh, I know," she chuckled. "It's just the opposite from what you
told Mis' Snow."
"Opposite?" repeated Pollyanna, obviously puzzled.
"Yes. You told her she could be glad because other folks wasn't
like her--all sick, you know."
"Yes," nodded Pollyanna.
"Well, the doctor can be glad because he isn't like other
folks--the sick ones, I mean, what he doctors," finished Nancy in
triumph.
It was Pollyanna's turn to frown.
"Why, y-yes," she admitted. "Of course that IS one way, but it
isn't the way I said; and--someway, I don't seem to quite like
the sound of it. It isn't exactly as if he said he was glad they
WERE sick, but--You do play the game so funny, sometimes Nancy,"
she sighed, as she went into the house.
Pollyanna found her aunt in the sitting room.
"Who was that man--the one who drove into the yard, Pollyanna?"
questioned the lady a little sharply.
"Why, Aunt Polly, that was Dr. Chilton! Don't you know him?"
"Dr. Chilton! What was he doing--here?
"He drove me home. Oh, and I gave the jelly to Mr. Pendleton,
and--"
Miss Polly lifted her head quickly.
"Pollyanna, he did not think I sent it?"
"Oh, no, Aunt Polly. I told him you didn't."
Miss Polly grew a sudden vivid pink.
"You TOLD him I didn't!"
Pollyanna opened wide her eyes at the remonstrative dismay in her
aunt's voice.
"Why, Aunt Polly, you SAID to!"
Aunt Polly sighed.
"I SAID, Pollyanna, that I did not send it, and for you to be
very sure that he did not think I DID!--which is a very different
matter from TELLING him outright that I did not send it." And she
turned vexedly away.
"Dear me! Well, I don't see where the difference is," sighed
Pollyanna, as she went to hang her hat on the one particular hook
in the house upon which Aunt Polly had said that it must be hung.