CHAPTER XI
A SURPRISE FOR MRS. CAREW
The matter of repairs and improvements having been properly and efficiently attended to, Mrs. Carew told herself that she had done her duty, and that the matter was closed. She would forget it. The boy was not Jamie—he could not be Jamie. That ignorant, sickly, crippled boy her dead sister's son? Impossible! She would cast the whole thing from her thoughts.
It was just here, however, that Mrs. Carew found herself against an immovable, impassable barrier: the whole thing refused to be cast from her thoughts. Always before her eyes was the picture of that bare little room and the wistful-faced boy. Always in her ears was that heartbreaking "What if it were Jamie?" And always, too, there was Pollyanna; for even though Mrs. Carew might (as she did) silence the pleadings and questionings of the little girl's tongue, there was no getting away from the prayers and reproaches of the little girl's eyes.
Twice again in desperation Mrs. Carew went to see the boy, telling herself each time that only another visit was needed to convince her that the boy was not the one she sought. But, even though while there in
117
