“Well, if you don’t beat the Dutch!  Say, do you know?—­I sha’n’t never hear ‘Nancy’ now that I don’t think o’ that ‘Hep—­Hep!’ and giggle.  My, I guess I am glad—­” She stopped short and turned amazed eyes on the little girl.  “Say, Miss Pollyanna, do you mean—­was you playin’ that ‘ere game then—­about my bein’ glad I wa’n’t named Hephzibah’?”

Pollyanna frowned; then she laughed.

“Why, Nancy, that’s so!  I was playing the game—­but that’s one of the times I just did it without thinking, I reckon.  You see, you do, lots of times; you get so used to it—­looking for something to be glad about, you know.  And most generally there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.”

“Well, m-maybe,” granted Nancy, with open doubt.

At half-past eight Pollyanna went up to bed.  The screens had not yet come, and the close little room was like an oven.  With longing eyes Pollyanna looked at the two fast-closed windows—­but she did not raise them.  She undressed, folded her clothes neatly, said her prayers, blew out her candle and climbed into bed.

Just how long she lay in sleepless misery, tossing from side to side of the hot little cot, she did not know; but it seemed to her that it must have been hours before she finally slipped out of bed, felt her way across the room and opened her door.

Out in the main attic all was velvet blackness save where the moon flung a path of silver half-way across the floor from the east dormer window.  With a resolute ignoring of that fearsome darkness to the right and to the left, Pollyanna drew a quick breath and pattered straight into that silvery path, and on to the window.

She had hoped, vaguely, that this window might have a screen, but it did not.  Outside, however, there was a wide world of fairy-like beauty, and there was, too, she knew, fresh, sweet air that would feel so good to hot cheeks and hands!

As she stepped nearer and peered longingly out, she saw something else:  she saw, only a little way below the window, the wide, flat tin roof of Miss Polly’s sun parlor built over the porte-cochere.  The sight filled her with longing.  If only, now, she were out there!

Fearfully she looked behind her.  Back there, somewhere, were her hot little room and her still hotter bed; but between her and them lay a horrid desert of blackness across which one must feel one’s way with outstretched, shrinking arms; while before her, out on the sun-parlor roof, were the moonlight and the cool, sweet night air.

If only her bed were out there!  And folks did sleep out of doors.  Joel Hartley at home, who was so sick with the consumption, had to sleep out of doors.