Pollyanna’s face fell.

“I don’t believe he knows half so much as Dr. Chilton.”

“Oh, yes, he does, I’m sure, dear.”

“But it was Dr. Chilton who doctored Mr. Pendleton’s broken leg,
Aunt Polly.  If—­if you don’t mind very much, I would like to have
Dr. Chilton—­truly I would!”

A distressed color suffused Miss Polly’s face.  For a moment she did not speak at all; then she said gently—­though yet with a touch of her old stern decisiveness: 

“But I do mind, Pollyanna.  I mind very much.  I would do anything—­almost anything for you, my dear; but I—­for reasons which I do not care to speak of now, I don’t wish Dr. Chilton called in on—­on this case.  And believe me, he can not know so much about—­about your trouble, as this great doctor does, who will come from New York to-morrow.”

Pollyanna still looked unconvinced.

“But, Aunt Polly, if you loved Dr. Chilton—­”

“What, Pollyanna?” Aunt Polly’s voice was very sharp now.  Her cheeks were very red, too.

“I say, if you loved Dr. Chilton, and didn’t love the other one,” sighed Pollyanna, “seems to me that would make some difference in the good he would do; and I love Dr. Chilton.”

The nurse entered the room at that moment, and Aunt Polly rose to her feet abruptly, a look of relief on her face.

“I am very sorry, Pollyanna,” she said, a little stiffly; “but I’m afraid you’ll have to let me be the judge, this time.  Besides, it’s already arranged.  The New York doctor is coming to-morrow.”

As it happened, however, the New York doctor did not come “to-morrow.”  At the last moment a telegram told of an unavoidable delay owing to the sudden illness of the specialist himself.  This led Pollyanna into a renewed pleading for the substitution of Dr. Chilton—­“which would be so easy now, you know.”

But as before, Aunt Polly shook her head and said “no, dear,” very decisively, yet with a still more anxious assurance that she would do anything—­anything but that—­to please her dear Pollyanna.

As the days of waiting passed, one by one, it did indeed, seem that Aunt Polly was doing everything (but that) that she could do to please her niece.

“I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed it—­you couldn’t ‘a’ made me believe it,” Nancy said to Old Tom one morning.  “There don’t seem ter be a minute in the day that Miss Polly ain’t jest hangin’ ’round waitin’ ter do somethin’ for that blessed lamb if ’tain’t more than ter let in the cat—­an’ her what wouldn’t let Fluff nor Buff up-stairs for love nor money a week ago; an’ now she lets ’em tumble all over the bed jest ’cause it pleases Miss Pollyanna!