In the morning, bravely she tried to face the thing. She even tried, with a tearful smile, to put it to the test of the glad game. She was reminded then of something Nancy had said to her years before: "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!"
"Not that we're 'quarrelling,' or even 'lovers,'" thought Pollyanna blushingly; "but just the same I can be glad HE'S glad, and glad SHE'S glad, too, only—" Even to herself Pollyanna could not finish this sentence.
Being so sure now that Jimmy and Mrs. Carew cared for each other, Pollyanna became peculiarly sensitive to everything that tended to strengthen that belief. And being ever on the watch for it, she found it, as was to be expected. First in Mrs. Carew's letters.
"I am seeing a lot of your friend, young Pendleton," Mrs. Carew wrote one day; "and I'm liking him more and more. I do wish, however—just for curiosity's sake—that I could trace to its source that elusive feeling that I've seen him before somewhere."
Frequently, after this, she mentioned him casually; and, to Pollyanna, in the very casualness of these references lay their sharpest sting; for it showed so unmistakably that Jimmy and Jimmy's presence were now to Mrs. Carew a matter of course. From other sources, too, Pollyanna found fuel for the fire of her suspicions. More and more frequently John Pendleton "dropped in" with his stories of Jimmy, and of what Jimmy was doing; and always here there was mention of Mrs. Carew. Poor Pollyanna wondered, indeed, sometimes, if John Pendleton could not talk of anything—but Mrs. Carew and Jimmy, so constantly was one or the other of those names on his lips.
There were Sadie Dean's letters, too, and they told of Jimmy, and of what he was doing to help Mrs. Carew. Even Jamie, who wrote occasionally, had his mite to add, for he wrote one evening:
"It's ten o'clock. I'm sitting here alone waiting for Mrs. Carew to come home. She and Pendleton have been to one of their usual socials down to the Home."
From Jimmy himself Pollyanna heard very rarely; and for that she told herself mournfully that she COULD be GLAD.
"For if he can't write about ANYTHING but Mrs. Carew and those girls,
I'm glad he doesn't write very often!" she sighed.