“What did she say?” Old Tom held his breath suspended.

“Nothin’—­at first.  She was so still I thought she hadn’t heard; and I was jest goin’ ter say it over when she speaks up quiet like:  ‘Tell Mr. Pendleton I will be down at once.’  An’ I come an’ told him.  Then I come out here an’ told you,” finished Nancy, casting another backward glance toward the house.

“Humph!” grunted Old Tom; and fell to work again.

In the ceremonious “parlor” of the Harrington homestead, Mr. John Pendleton did not have to wait long before a swift step warned him of Miss Polly’s coming.  As he attempted to rise, she made a gesture of remonstrance.  She did not offer her hand, however, and her face was coldly reserved.

“I called to ask for—­Pollyanna,” he began at once, a little brusquely.

“Thank you.  She is about the same,” said Miss Polly.

“And that is—­won’t you tell me how she is?” His voice was not quite steady this time.

A quick spasm of pain crossed the woman’s face.

“I can’t, I wish I could!”

“You mean—­you don’t know?”

“Yes.”

“But—­the doctor?”

“Dr. Warren himself seems—­at sea.  He is in correspondence now with a New York specialist.  They have arranged for a consultation at once.”

“But—­but what were her injuries that you do know?”

“A slight cut on the head, one or two bruises, and—­and an injury to the spine which has seemed to cause—­paralysis from the hips down.”

A low cry came from the man.  There was a brief silence; then, huskily, he asked: 

“And Pollyanna—­how does she—­take it?”

“She doesn’t understand—­at all—­how things really are.  And I can’t tell her.”

“But she must know—­something!”

Miss Polly lifted her hand to the collar at her throat in the gesture that had become so common to her of late.

“Oh, yes.  She knows she can’t—­move; but she thinks her legs are—­broken.  She says she’s glad it’s broken legs like yours rather than ‘lifelong-invalids’ like Mrs. Snow’s; because broken legs get well, and the other—­doesn’t.  She talks like that all the time, until it—­it seems as if I should—­die!”

Through the blur of tears in his own eyes, the man saw the drawn face opposite, twisted with emotion.  Involuntarily his thoughts went back to what Pollyanna had said when he had made his final plea for her presence:  “Oh, I couldn’t leave Aunt Polly—­now!”

It was this thought that made him ask very gently, as soon as he could control his voice: 

“I wonder if you know, Miss Harrington, how hard I tried to get Pollyanna to come and live with me.”

“With you!—­Pollyanna!”

The man winced a little at the tone of her voice; but his own voice was still impersonally cool when he spoke again.

“Yes.  I wanted to adopt her—­legally, you understand; making her my heir, of course.”