"Yes, it was, Pollyanna, your little hand in the long ago—you, and your glad game."
"Oh-h!" Pollyanna relaxed visibly in her seat. The terror in her eyes began slowly to recede.
"And so all these years I've been gradually growing into a different man, Pollyanna. But there's one thing I haven't changed in, my dear." He paused, looked away, then turned gravely tender eyes back to her face. "I still think it takes a woman's hand and heart or a child's presence to make a home."
"Yes; b-but you've g-got the child's presence," plunged in Pollyanna, the terror coming back to her eyes. "There's Jimmy, you know."
The man gave an amused laugh.
"I know; but—I don't think even you would say that Jimmy is—is exactly a CHILD'S presence any longer," he remarked.
"N-no, of course not."
"Besides—Pollyanna, I've made up my mind. I've got to have the woman's hand and heart." His voice dropped, and trembled a little.
"Oh-h, have you?" Pollyanna's fingers met and clutched each other in a spasmodic clasp. John Pendleton, however, seemed neither to hear nor see. He had leaped to his feet, and was nervously pacing up and down the little house.
"Pollyanna," he stopped and faced her; "if—if you were I, and were going to ask the woman you loved to come and make your old gray pile of stone a home, how would you go to work to do it?"