"Well, well, child, have your own way. But if I promise to go, YOU must promise not to go near the window for an hour, and not to ask again to-day if I think it's going to clear up."
"Yes'm, I will—I mean, I won't," palpitated Pollyanna. Then, as a pale shaft of light that was almost a sunbeam, came aslant through the window, she cried joyously: "But you DO think it IS going to—Oh!" she broke off in dismay, and ran from the room.
Unmistakably it "cleared up" the next morning. But, though the sun shone brightly, there was a sharp chill in the air, and by afternoon, when Pollyanna came home from school, there was a brisk wind. In spite of protests, however, she insisted that it was a beautiful day out, and that she should be perfectly miserable if Mrs. Carew would not come for a walk in the Public Garden. And Mrs. Carew went, though still protesting.
As might have been expected, it was a fruitless journey. Together the impatient woman and the anxious-eyed little girl hurried shiveringly up one path and down another. (Pollyanna, not finding the boy in his accustomed place, was making frantic search in every nook and corner of the Garden. To Pollyanna it seemed that she could not have it so. Here she was in the Garden, and here with her was Mrs. Carew; but not anywhere to be found was Jamie—and yet not one word could she say to Mrs. Carew.) At last, thoroughly chilled and exasperated, Mrs. Carew insisted on going home; and despairingly Pollyanna went.
Sorry days came to Pollyanna then. What to her was perilously near a second deluge—but according to Mrs. Carew was merely "the usual fall rains"—brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady downpour. If perchance occasionally there came a day of sunshine, Pollyanna always flew to the Garden; but in vain. Jamie was never there. It was the middle of November now, and even the Garden itself was full of dreariness. The trees were bare, the benches almost empty, and not one boat was on the little pond. True, the squirrels and pigeons were there, and the sparrows were as pert as ever, but to feed them was almost more of a sorrow than a joy, for every saucy switch of Sir Lancelot's feathery tail but brought bitter memories of the lad who had given him his name—and who was not there.
"And to think I didn't find out where he lived!" mourned Pollyanna to herself over and over again, as the days passed. "And he was Jamie—I just know he was Jamie. And now I'll have to wait and wait till spring comes, and it's warm enough for him to come here again. And then, maybe, I sha'n't be coming here by that time. O dear, O dear—and he WAS Jamie, I know he was Jamie!"
Then, one dreary afternoon, the unexpected happened. Pollyanna, passing through the upper hallway heard angry voices in the hall below, one of which she recognized as being Mary's, while the other—the other—
The other voice was saying:
"Not on yer life! It's nix on the beggin' business. Do yer get me? I wants ter see the kid, Pollyanna. I got a message for her from—from Sir James. Now beat it, will ye, and trot out the kid, if ye don't mind."
With a glad little cry Pollyanna turned and fairly flew down the stairway.