Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/180

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156
Pollyanna Grows Up


down—'way down to the sill. The minute I stepped into the hall I heard music—Parsifal. The drawing-rooms were open, and the air was sweet with roses.

"'Mrs. Carew and Master Jamie are in the music-room,' said the maid. And there I found them—my sister, and the youth she has taken into her home, listening to one of those modern contrivances that can hold an entire opera company, including the orchestra.

"The boy was in a wheel chair. He was pale, but plainly beatifically happy. My sister looked ten years younger. Her usually colorless cheeks showed a faint pink, and her eyes glowed and sparkled. A little later, after I had talked a few minutes with the boy, my sister and I went up-stairs to her own rooms; and there she talked to me—of Jamie. Not of the old Jamie, as she used to, with tear-wet eyes and hopeless sighs, but of the new Jamie—and there were no sighs nor tears now. There was, instead, the eagerness of enthusiastic interest.

"'Della, he's wonderful,' she began. 'Everything that is best in music, art, and literature seems to appeal to him in a perfectly marvelous fashion, only, of course, he needs development and training. That's what I'm going to see that he gets. A tutor is coming to-morrow. Of course his language is something awful; at the same time, he has read so many good books that his vocabulary is quite amazing—and you should hear the stories he can reel off! Of course in general education he is very deficient; but he's eager to learn, so that will soon be remedied. He loves music, and I shall give him what training in that he