“Why, Aunt Polly, you—­you mean—­” She hesitated, and her aunt filled the pause.

“We will go up-stairs to your room.  Your trunk is already there, I presume.  I told Timothy to take it up—­if you had one.  You may follow me, Pollyanna.”

Without speaking, Pollyanna turned and followed her aunt from the room.  Her eyes were brimming with tears, but her chin was bravely high.

“After all, I—­I reckon I’m glad she doesn’t want me to talk about father,” Pollyanna was thinking.  “It’ll be easier, maybe—­if I don’t talk about him.  Probably, anyhow, that is why she told me not to talk about him.”  And Pollyanna, convinced anew of her aunt’s “kindness,” blinked off the tears and looked eagerly about her.

She was on the stairway now.  Just ahead, her aunt’s black silk skirt rustled luxuriously.  Behind her an open door allowed a glimpse of soft-tinted rugs and satin-covered chairs.  Beneath her feet a marvellous carpet was like green moss to the tread.  On every side the gilt of picture frames or the glint of sunlight through the filmy mesh of lace curtains flashed in her eyes.

“Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly,” breathed the little girl, rapturously; “what a perfectly lovely, lovely house!  How awfully glad you must be you’re so rich!”

“PollyANNA!” ejaculated her aunt, turning sharply about as she reached the head of the stairs.  “I’m surprised at you—­making a speech like that to me!”

“Why, Aunt Polly, aren’t you?” queried Pollyanna, in frank wonder.

“Certainly not, Pollyanna.  I hope I could not so far forget myself as to be sinfully proud of any gift the Lord has seen fit to bestow upon me,” declared the lady; “certainly not, of Riches!”

Miss Polly turned and walked down the hall toward the attic stairway door.  She was glad, now, that she had put the child in the attic room.  Her idea at first had been to get her niece as far away as possible from herself, and at the same time place her where her childish heedlessness would not destroy valuable furnishings.  Now—­with this evident strain of vanity showing thus early—­it was all the more fortunate that the room planned for her was plain and sensible, thought Miss Polly.

Eagerly Pollyanna’s small feet pattered behind her aunt.  Still more eagerly her big blue eyes tried to look in all directions at once, that no thing of beauty or interest in this wonderful house might be passed unseen.  Most eagerly of all her mind turned to the wondrously exciting problem about to be solved:  behind which of all these fascinating doors was waiting now her room—­the dear, beautiful room full of curtains, rugs, and pictures, that was to be her very own?  Then, abruptly, her aunt opened a door and ascended another stairway.

There was little to be seen here.  A bare wall rose on either side.  At the top of the stairs, wide reaches of shadowy space led to far corners where the roof came almost down to the floor, and where were stacked innumerable trunks and boxes.  It was hot and stifling, too.  Unconsciously Pollyanna lifted her head higher—­it seemed so hard to breathe.  Then she saw that her aunt had thrown open a door at the right.