“Very poorly, thank you,” murmured Mrs. Snow, falling back into her usual listless attitude.  “I lost my nap this morning.  Nellie Higgins next door has begun music lessons, and her practising drives me nearly wild.  She was at it all the morning—­every minute!  I’m sure, I don’t know what I shall do!”

Polly nodded sympathetically.

“I know.  It is awful!  Mrs. White had it once—­one of my Ladies’ Aiders, you know.  She had rheumatic fever, too, at the same time, so she couldn’t thrash ’round.  She said ’twould have been easier if she could have.  Can you?”

“Can I—­what?”

“Thrash ’round—­move, you know, so as to change your position when the music gets too hard to stand.”

Mrs. Snow stared a little.

“Why, of course I can move—­anywhere—­in bed,” she rejoined a little irritably.

“Well, you can be glad of that, then, anyhow, can’t you?” nodded Pollyanna.  “Mrs. White couldn’t.  You can’t thrash when you have rheumatic fever—­though you want to something awful, Mrs. White says.  She told me afterwards she reckoned she’d have gone raving crazy if it hadn’t been for Mr. White’s sister’s ears—­being deaf, so.”

“Sister’s—­ears!  What do you mean?”

Pollyanna laughed.

“Well, I reckon I didn’t tell it all, and I forgot you didn’t know Mrs. White.  You see, Miss White was deaf—­awfully deaf; and she came to visit ’em and to help take care of Mrs. White and the house.  Well, they had such an awful time making her understand anything, that after that, every time the piano commenced to play across the street, Mrs. White felt so glad she could hear it, that she didn’t mind so much that she did hear it, ’cause she couldn’t help thinking how awful ’twould be if she was deaf and couldn’t hear anything, like her husband’s sister.  You see, she was playing the game, too.  I’d told her about it.”

“The—­game?”

Pollyanna clapped her hands.

“There!  I ’most forgot; but I’ve thought it up, Mrs. Snow—­what you can be glad about.”

“Glad about!  What do you mean?”

“Why, I told you I would.  Don’t you remember?  You asked me to tell you something to be glad about—­glad, you know, even though you did have to lie here abed all day.”

“Oh!” scoffed the woman.  “That?  Yes, I remember that; but I didn’t suppose you were in earnest any more than I was.”

“Oh, yes, I was,” nodded Pollyanna, triumphantly; “and I found it, too.  But ’twas hard.  It’s all the more fun, though, always, when ’tis hard.  And I will own up, honest to true, that I couldn’t think of anything for a while.  Then I got it.”

“Did you, really?  Well, what is it?” Mrs. Snow’s voice was sarcastically polite.

Pollyanna drew a long breath.

“I thought—­how glad you could be—­that other folks weren’t like you—­all sick in bed like this, you know,” she announced impressively.  Mrs. Snow stared.  Her eyes were angry.