It was a delightful plan. Pollyanna had it entirely formulated in about five minutes; then she told Mrs Carew. Mrs Carew did not think it was a delightful plan, and she said so very distinctly.
“Oh, but I’m sure they’ll think it is,” argued Pollyanna, in reply to Mrs Carew’s objections. “And just think how easy we can do it! The tree is just as it was – except for the presents, and we can get more of those. It won’t be so very long till just New Year’s Eve; and only think how glad she’ll be to come! Wouldn’t you be, if you hadn’t had anything for Christmas, only blistered feet and chicken pie?”
“Dear, dear, what an impossible child you are!” frowned Mrs Carew. “Even yet it doesn’t seem to occur to you that we don’t know this young person’s name.”
“So we don’t! And isn’t it funny, when I feel that I know her so well?” smiled Pollyanna. “You see, we had such a good talk in the Garden that day, and she told me all about how lonesome she was, and that she thought the lonesomest place in the world was in a crowd in a big city, because folks didn’t think nor notice. Oh, there was one that noticed; but he noticed too much, she said, and he hadn’t ought to notice her any – which is kind of funny, isn’t it, when you come to think of it. But anyhow, he came for her there in the Garden to go somewhere with him, and she wouldn’t go, and he was a real handsome gentleman, too – until he began to look so cross, just at the last. Folks aren’t so pretty when they’re cross, are they? Now there was a lady today looking at bows, and she said – well, lots of things that weren’t nice, you know. And she didn’t look pretty, either, after – after she began to talk. But you will let me have the tree New Year’s Eve, won’t you, Mrs Carew? – and invite this girl who sells bows, and Jamie? He’s better, you know, now, and he could come. Of course Jerry would have to wheel him – but then, we’d want Jerry, anyway.”
“Oh, of course, Jerry!” exclaimed Mrs Carew in ironic scorn. “But why stop with Jerry? I’m sure Jerry has hosts of friends who would love to come. And – ”
“Oh, Mrs Carew, may I?” broke in Pollyanna, in uncontrollable delight. “Oh, how good, good, GOOD you are! I’ve so wanted – ” But Mrs Carew fairly gasped aloud in surprise and dismay.
“No, no, Pollyanna, I – ” she began, protestingly. But Pollyanna, entirely mistaking the meaning of her interruption, plunged in again in stout championship.
“Indeed you are good – just the bestest ever; and I shan’t let you say you aren’t. Now I reckon I’ll have a party all right! There’s Tommy Dolan and his sister Jennie, and the two Macdonald children, and three girls whose names I don’t know that live under the Murphys, and a whole lot more, if we have room for ’em. And only think how glad they’ll be when I tell ’em! Why, Mrs Carew, seems to me as if I never knew anything so perfectly lovely in all my life – and it’s all your doings! Now mayn’t I begin right away to invite ’em – so they’ll know what’s coming to ’em?”
And Mrs Carew, who would not have believed such a thing possible, heard herself murmuring a faint “yes,” which, she knew, bound her to the giving of a Christmas-tree party on New Year’s Eve to a dozen children from Murphy’s Alley and a young salesgirl whose name she did not know.
Perhaps in Mrs Carew’s memory was still lingering a young girl’s “Sometimes I wonder there don’t some of ’em think of helpin’ the girls before they go wrong.” Perhaps in her ears was still ringing Pollyanna’s story of that same girl who had found a crowd in a big city the loneliest place in the world, yet who had refused to go with the handsome man that had “noticed too much.” Perhaps in Mrs Carew’s heart was the undefined hope that somewhere in it all lay the peace she had so longed for. Perhaps it was a little of all three combined with utter helplessness in the face of Pollyanna’s amazing twisting of her irritated sarcasm into the wide-sweeping hospitality of a willing hostess. Whatever it was, the thing was done; and at once Mrs Carew found herself caught into a veritable whirr of plans and plottings, the center of which was always Pollyanna and the party.
To her sister, Mrs Carew wrote distractedly of the whole affair, closing with:
What I’m going to do I don’t know; but I suppose I shall have to keep right on doing as I am doing. There is no other way. Of course, if Pollyanna once begins to preach – but she hasn’t yet; so I can’t, with a clear conscience, send her back to you.”
Della, reading this letter at the Sanatorium, laughed aloud at the conclusion.
“‘Hasn’t preached yet’, indeed!” she chuckled to herself. “Bless her dear heart! And yet you, Ruth Carew, own up to giving two Christmas-tree parties within a week, and, as I happen to know, your home, which used to be shrouded in death like gloom, is aflame with scarlet and green from top to toe. But she hasn’t preached yet – oh, no, she hasn’t preached yet!”
The party was a great success. Even Mrs Carew admitted that. Jamie, in his wheel-chair, Jerry with his startling but expressive vocabulary, and the girl (whose name proved to be Sadie Dean), vied with each other in amusing the more diffident guests. Sadie Dean, much to the others’ surprise – and perhaps to her own – disclosed an intimate knowledge of the most fascinating games; and these games, with Jamie’s stories and Jerry’s good-natured banter, kept every one in gales of laughter until supper, and the generous distribution of presents from the laden tree sent the happy guests home with tired sighs of content.
If Jamie (who with Jerry was the last to leave) looked about him a bit wistfully, no one apparently noticed it. Yet Mrs Carew, when she bade him good-night, said low in his ear, half impatiently, half embarrassedly:
“Well, Jamie, have you changed your mind – about coming?”
The boy hesitated. A faint colour stole into his cheeks. He turned and looked into her eyes wistfully, searchingly. Then very slowly he shook his head.
“If it could always be – like tonight, I – could,” he sighed. “But it wouldn’t. There’d be tomorrow, and next week, and next month, and next year comin’; and I’d know before next week that I hadn’t oughter come.”
If Mrs Carew had thought that the New Year’s Eve party was to end the matter of Pollyanna’s efforts in behalf of Sadie Dean, she was soon undeceived; for the very next morning Pollyanna began to talk of her.