Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/142

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Pollyanna Grows Up


dirty, and very tiny rooms. Her first impulse, of course, had been "to help." With Mrs. Carew she made two visits to Jamie, and greatly did she rejoice at the changed conditions she found there after "that man Dodge" had "tended to things." But this, to Pollyanna, was a mere drop in the bucket. There were yet all those other sick-looking men, unhappy-looking women, and ragged children out in the street—Jamie's neighbors. Confidently she looked to Mrs. Carew for help for them, also.

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew, when she learned what was expected of her, "so you want the whole street to be supplied with fresh paper, paint, and new stairways, do you? Pray, is there anything else you'd like?"

"Oh, yes, lots of things," sighed Pollyanna, happily. "You see, there are so many things they need—all of them! And what fun it will be to get them! How I wish I was rich so I could help, too; but I'm 'most as glad to be with you when you get them."

Mrs. Carew quite gasped aloud in her amazement. She lost no time—though she did lose not a little patience—in explaining that she had no intention of doing anything further in "Murphy's Alley," and that there was no reason why she should. No one would expect her to. She had canceled all possible obligations, and had even been really very generous, any one would say, in what she had done for the tenement where lived Jamie and the Murphys. (That she owned the tenement building she did not think it necessary to state.) At some length she explained to