CHAPTER XVII
WHEN POLLYANNA CAME
As the train neared Beldingsville, Pollyanna watched her aunt anxiously. All day Mrs. Chilton had been growing more and more restless, more and more gloomy; and Pollyanna was fearful of the time when the familiar home station should be reached.
As Pollyanna looked at her aunt, her heart ached. She was thinking that she would not have believed it possible that any one could have changed and aged so greatly in six short months. Mrs. Chilton's eyes were lusterless, her cheeks pallid and shrunken, and her forehead crossed and recrossed by fretful lines. Her mouth drooped at the corners, and her hair was combed tightly back in the unbecoming fashion that had been hers when Pollyanna first had seen her, years before. All the softness and sweetness that seemed to have come to her with her marriage had dropped from her like a cloak, leaving uppermost the old hardness and sourness that had been hers when she was Miss Polly Harrington, unloved, and unloving.
"Pollyanna!" Mrs. Chilton's voice was incisive.
Pollyanna started guiltily. She had an uncomfortable feeling that her aunt might have read her thoughts.
"Yes, auntie."
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