“Oh-h!” breathed Pollyanna, in wide-eyed amazement.  “But, Nancy, I should think if they loved each other they’d make up some time.  Both of ’em all alone, so, all these years.  I should think they’d be glad to make up!”

Nancy sniffed disdainfully.

“I guess maybe you don’t know much about lovers, Miss Pollyanna.  You ain’t big enough yet, anyhow.  But if there is a set o’ folks in the world that wouldn’t have no use for that ’ere ‘glad game’ o’ your’n, it’d be a pair o’ quarrellin’ lovers; and that’s what they be.  Ain’t he cross as sticks, most gen’rally?—­and ain’t she—­”

Nancy stopped abruptly, remembering just in time to whom, and about whom, she was speaking.  Suddenly, however, she chuckled.

“I ain’t sayin’, though, Miss Pollyanna, but what it would be a pretty slick piece of business if you could get ’em ter playin’ it—­so they would be glad ter make up.  But, my land! wouldn’t folks stare some—­Miss Polly and him!  I guess, though, there ain’t much chance, much chance!”

Pollyanna said nothing; but when she went into the house a little later, her face was very thoughtful.

CHAPTER XVIII.  PRISMS

As the warm August days passed, Pollyanna went very frequently to the great house on Pendleton Hill.  She did not feel, however, that her visits were really a success.  Not but that the man seemed to want her there—­he sent for her, indeed, frequently; but that when she was there, he seemed scarcely any the happier for her presence—­at least, so Pollyanna thought.

He talked to her, it was true, and he showed her many strange and beautiful things—­books, pictures, and curios.  But he still fretted audibly over his own helplessness, and he chafed visibly under the rules and “regulatings” of the unwelcome members of his household.  He did, indeed, seem to like to hear Pollyanna talk, however, and Pollyanna talked, Pollyanna liked to talk—­but she was never sure that she would not look up and find him lying back on his pillow with that white, hurt look that always pained her; and she was never sure which—­if any—­of her words had brought it there.  As for telling him the “glad game,” and trying to get him to play it—­Pollyanna had never seen the time yet when she thought he would care to hear about it.  She had twice tried to tell him; but neither time had she got beyond the beginning of what her father had said—­John Pendleton had on each occasion turned the conversation abruptly to another subject.

Pollyanna never doubted now that John Pendleton was her Aunt Polly’s one-time lover; and with all the strength of her loving, loyal heart, she wished she could in some way bring happiness into their to her mind—­miserably lonely lives.