"I've got to go now, but I'll come again to-morrow. Maybe I'll have a lady with me that you'll like to know. You'll be here to-morrow, won't you?" she finished anxiously.
"Sure, if it's pleasant. Jerry totes me up here 'most every mornin'. They fixed it so he could, you know; and I bring my dinner and stay till four o'clock. Jerry's good to me—he is!"
"I know, I know," nodded Pollyanna. "And maybe you'll find somebody else to be good to you, too," she caroled. With which cryptic statement and a beaming smile, she was gone.
CHAPTER IX
PLANS AND PLOTTINGS
On the way home Pollyanna made joyous plans. To-morrow, in some way or other, Mrs. Carew must be persuaded to go with her for a walk in the Public Garden. Just how this was to be brought about Pollyanna did not know; but brought about it must be.
To tell Mrs. Carew plainly that she had found Jamie, and wanted her to go to see him, was out of the question. There was, of course, a bare chance that this might not be her Jamie; and if it were not, and if she had thus raised in Mrs. Carew false hopes, the result might be disastrous. Pollyanna knew, from what Mary had told her, that twice already Mrs. Carew had been made very ill by the great disappointment of following alluring clues that had led to some boy very different from her dead sister's son. So Pollyanna knew that she could not tell Mrs. Carew why she wanted her to go to walk to-morrow in the Public Garden. But there would be a way, declared Pollyanna to herself as she happily hurried homeward.
Fate, however, as it happened, once more intervened in the shape of a heavy rainstorm; and Pollyanna did not have to more than look out of doors the next morning to realize that there would be no Public Garden stroll that day. Worse yet, neither the next day nor the next saw the clouds dispelled; and Pollyanna spent all three afternoons wandering from window to window, peering up into the sky, and anxiously demanding of every one: "DON'T you think it looks a LITTLE like clearing up?"
So unusual was this behavior on the part of the cheery little girl, and so irritating was the constant questioning, that at last Mrs. Carew lost her patience.
"For pity's sake, child, what is the trouble?" she cried. "I never knew you to fret so about the weather. Where's that wonderful glad game of yours to-day?"