"Ho—ho! Brrrr!" spluttered the big man, coloring like a schoolboy and throwing back his head with a hearty laugh. "Ho—ho! Just as if—" He broke off with a quick lifting of his hand. The next moment he was escorting a plainly very much frightened little old lady from curb to curb. If his step were a bit more pompous, and his chest a bit more full, it must have been only an unconscious tribute to the watching eyes of the little girl back at the starting-point. A moment later, with a haughtily permissive wave of his hand toward the chafing drivers and chauffeurs, he strolled back to Pollyanna.
"Oh, that was splendid!" she greeted him, with shining eyes. "I love to see you do it—and it's just like the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea, isn't it?—with you holding back the waves for the people to cross. And how glad you must be all the time, that you can do it! I used to think being a doctor was the very gladdest business there was, but I reckon, after all, being a policeman is gladder yet—to help frightened people like this, you know. And—" But with another "Brrrr!" and an embarrassed laugh, the big blue-coated man was back in the middle of the street, and Pollyanna was all alone on the curbstone.
For only a minute longer did Pollyanna watch her fascinating "Red Sea," then, with a regretful backward glance, she turned away.
"I reckon maybe I'd better be going home now," she meditated. "It must be 'most dinner time." And briskly she started to walk back by the way she had come.
