"I know, oh, I know," breathed Pollyanna, with shining eyes. "Didn't I lose MY legs for a while?"
"Did you? Then you do know, some. But you've got yours again. I hain't, you know," sighed the boy, the shadow in his eyes deepening.
"But you haven't told me yet about—the Jolly Book," prompted
Pollyanna, after a minute.
The boy stirred and laughed shamefacedly.
"Well, you see, it ain't much, after all, except to me. YOU wouldn't see much in it. I started it a year ago. I was feelin' 'specially bad that day. Nothin' was right. For a while I grumped it out, just thinkin'; and then I picked up one of father's books and tried to read. And the first thing I see was this: I learned it afterwards, so I can say it now.
"'Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem;
There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy, of silence or of sound.'
[Footnote: Blanchard. Lyric Offerings. Hidden Joys.]
"Well, I was mad. I wished I could put the guy that wrote that in my place, and see what kind of joy he'd find in my 'leaves.' I was so mad I made up my mind I'd prove he didn't know what he was talkin' about, so I begun to hunt for 'em—the joys in my 'leaves,' you know. I took a little old empty notebook that Jerry had given me, and I said to myself that I'd write 'em down. Everythin' that had anythin' about it that I liked I'd put down in the book. Then I'd just show how many 'joys' I had."
"Yes, yes!" cried Pollyanna, absorbedly, as the boy paused for breath.
"Well, I didn't expect to get many, but—do you know?—I got a lot. There was somethin' about 'most everythin' that I liked a LITTLE, so in it had to go. The very first one was the book itself—that I'd got it, you know, to write in. Then somebody give me a flower in a pot, and Jerry found a dandy book in the subway. After that it was really fun to hunt 'em out—I'd find 'em in such queer places, sometimes. Then one day Jerry got hold of the little notebook, and found out what 'twas. Then he give it its name—the Jolly Book. And—and that's all."