Mrs. Carew got suddenly to her feet.
"Yes, I know," she murmured, with an odd little gesture, as if throwing something distasteful aside. "But—" She did not finish her sentence, and a moment later she had left the room.
When she came back in five minutes she found, much to her surprise, that Jimmy had gone.
"Why, I thought he was going with us on the girls' picnic!" she exclaimed.
"So did I," frowned Jamie. "But the first thing I knew he was explaining or apologizing or something about unexpectedly having to leave town, and he'd come to tell you he couldn't go with us. Anyhow, the next thing I knew he'd gone. You see,"—Jamie's eyes were glowing again—"I don't think I knew quite what he did say, anyway. I had something else to think of." And he jubilantly spread before her the two letters which all the time he had still kept in his hands.
"Oh, Jamie!" breathed Mrs. Carew, when she had read the letters through. "How proud I am of you!" Then suddenly her eyes filled with tears at the look of ineffable joy that illumined Jamie's face.
CHAPTER XXIX
JIMMY AND JOHN
It was a very determined, square-jawed young man that alighted at the Beldingsville station late that Saturday night. And it was an even more determined, square-jawed young man that, before ten o'clock the next morning, stalked through the Sunday-quiet village streets and climbed the hill to the Harrington homestead. Catching sight of a loved and familiar flaxen coil of hair on a well-poised little head just disappearing into the summerhouse, the young man ignored the conventional front steps and doorbell, crossed the lawn, and strode through the garden paths until he came face to face with the owner of the flaxen coil of hair.
"Jimmy!" gasped Pollyanna, falling back with startled eyes. "Why, where did you—come from?"