Nancy frowned in meditation.  Nancy was getting so she could play this game of “being glad” quite successfully, she thought.  She rather enjoyed studying out Pollyanna’s “posers,” too, as she called some of the little girl’s questions.

“Oh, I know,” she chuckled.  “It’s just the opposite from what you told Mis’ Snow.”

“Opposite?” repeated Pollyanna, obviously puzzled.

“Yes.  You told her she could be glad because other folks wasn’t like her—­all sick, you know.”

“Yes,” nodded Pollyanna.

“Well, the doctor can be glad because he isn’t like other folks—­the sick ones, I mean, what he doctors,” finished Nancy in triumph.

It was Pollyanna’s turn to frown.

“Why, y-yes,” she admitted.  “Of course that is one way, but it isn’t the way I said; and—­someway, I don’t seem to quite like the sound of it.  It isn’t exactly as if he said he was glad they were sick, but—­You do play the game so funny, sometimes Nancy,” she sighed, as she went into the house.

Pollyanna found her aunt in the sitting room.

“Who was that man—­the one who drove into the yard, Pollyanna?” questioned the lady a little sharply.

“Why, Aunt Polly, that was Dr. Chilton!  Don’t you know him?”

“Dr. Chilton!  What was he doing—­here?”

“He drove me home.  Oh, and I gave the jelly to Mr. Pendleton, and—­”

Miss Polly lifted her head quickly.

“Pollyanna, he did not think I sent it?”

“Oh, no, Aunt Polly.  I told him you didn’t.”

Miss Polly grew a sudden vivid pink.

“You told him I didn’t!”

Pollyanna opened wide her eyes at the remonstrative dismay in her aunt’s voice.

“Why, Aunt Polly, you said to!”

Aunt Polly sighed.

“I said, Pollyanna, that I did not send it, and for you to be very sure that he did not think I did!—­which is a very different matter from telling him outright that I did not send it.”  And she turned vexedly away.

“Dear me!  Well, I don’t see where the difference is,” sighed Pollyanna, as she went to hang her hat on the one particular hook in the house upon which Aunt Polly had said that it must be hung.

CHAPTER XVI.  A RED ROSE AND A LACE SHAWL

It was on a rainy day about a week after Pollyanna’s visit to Mr. John Pendleton, that Miss Polly was driven by Timothy to an early afternoon committee meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society.  When she returned at three o’clock, her cheeks were a bright, pretty pink, and her hair, blown by the damp wind, had fluffed into kinks and curls wherever the loosened pins had given leave.

Pollyanna had never before seen her aunt look like this.

“Oh—­oh—­oh!  Why, Aunt Polly, you’ve got ’em, too,” she cried rapturously, dancing round and round her aunt, as that lady entered the sitting room.