Page:Pollyanna Grows Up.djvu/293

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The Day Pollyanna Did Not Play
267


fast enough. Anyway, it's made fuss enough for a whole roof already, and I'm sick of it!" With which statement, Pollyanna, her face carefully averted, turned and trailed listlessly out of the room.

"It's so funny and so—so hard, I'm afraid I'm making a mess of it," she whispered to herself anxiously, as she hurried down-stairs to the kitchen.

Behind her, Aunt Polly, in the bedroom, gazed after her with eyes that were again faintly puzzled.

Aunt Polly had occasion a good many times before six o'clock that night to gaze at Pollyanna with surprised and questioning eyes. Nothing was right with Pollyanna. The fire would not burn, the wind blew one particular blind loose three times, and still a third leak was discovered in the roof. The mail brought to Pollyanna a letter that made her cry (though no amount of questioning on Aunt Polly's part would persuade her to tell why). Even the dinner went wrong, and innumerable things happened in the afternoon to call out fretful, discouraged remarks.

Not until the day was more than half gone did a look of shrewd suspicion suddenly fight for supremacy with the puzzled questioning in Aunt Polly's eyes. If Pollyanna saw this she made no sign. Certainly there was no abatement in her fretfulness and discontent. Long before six o'clock, however, the suspicion in Aunt Polly's eyes became conviction, and drove to ignominious defeat the puzzled questioning. But, curiously enough then, a new look came to take its place, a look that was actually a twinkle of amusement.

At last, after a particularly doleful complaint on