Pollyanna Grows Up

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Excerpt

Della Wetherby tripped up the somewhat imposing steps of her sister’s Commonwealth Avenue home and pressed an energetic finger against the electric-bell button. From the tip of her wing-trimmed hat to the toe of her low-heeled shoe she radiated health, capability, and alert decision. Even her voice, as she greeted the maid that opened the door, vibrated with the joy of living.

“Good morning, Mary. Is my sister in?”

“Y-yes, ma’am, Mrs. Carew is in,” hesitated the girl; “but–she gave orders she’d see no one.”

“Did she? Well, I’m no one,” smiled Miss Wetherby, “so she’ll see me. Don’t worry–I’ll take the blame,” she nodded, in answer to the frightened remonstrance in the girl’s eyes. “Where is she–in her sitting-room?”

“Y-yes, ma’am; but–that is, she said–” Miss Wetherby, however, was already halfway up the broad stairway; and, with a despairing backward glance, the maid turned away.

In the hall above Della Wetherby unhesitatingly walked toward a half-open door, and knocked.

“Well, Mary,” answered a “dear-me-what-now” voice. “Haven’t I–Oh, Della!” The voice grew suddenly warm with love and surprise. “You dear girl, where did you come from?”

“Yes, it’s Della,” smiled that young woman, blithely, already halfway across the room. “I’ve come from an over-Sunday at the beach with two of the other nurses, and I’m on my way back to the Sanatorium now. That is, I’m here now, but I sha’n’t be long. I stepped in for–this,” she finished, giving the owner of the “dear-me-what-now” voice a hearty kiss.

Mrs. Carew frowned and drew back a little coldly. The slight touch of joy and animation that had come into her face fled, leaving only a dispirited fretfulness that was plainly very much at home there.

“Oh, of course! I might have known,” she said. “You never stay–here.”

“Here!” Della Wetherby laughed merrily, and threw up her hands; then, abruptly, her voice and manner changed. She regarded her sister with grave, tender eyes. “Ruth, dear, I couldn’t–I just couldn’t live in this house. You know I couldn’t,” she finished gently.

Mrs. Carew stirred irritably.

“I’m sure I don’t see why not,” she fenced.

Della Wetherby shook her head.

“Yes, you do, dear. You know I’m entirely out of sympathy with it all: the gloom, the lack of aim, the insistence on misery and bitterness.”

“But I AM miserable and bitter.”

“You ought not to be.”

“Why not? What have I to make me otherwise?”

Della Wetherby gave an impatient gesture.

“Ruth, look here,” she challenged. “You’re thirty-three years old. You have good health–or would have, if you treated yourself properly–and you certainly have an abundance of time and a superabundance of money. Surely anybody would say you ought to find SOMETHING to do this glorious morning besides sitting moped up in this tomb-like house with instructions to the maid that you’ll see no one.”

“But I don’t WANT to see anybody.”

“Then I’d MAKE myself want to.”

Mrs. Carew sighed wearily and turned away her head.

“Oh, Della, why won’t you ever understand? I’m not like you. I can’t–forget.”

A swift pain crossed the younger woman’s face.

“You mean–Jamie, I suppose. I don’t forget–that, dear. I couldn’t, of course. But moping won’t help us–find him.”

“As if I hadn’t TRIED to find him, for eight long years–and by something besides moping,” flashed Mrs. Carew, indignantly, with a sob in her voice.

“Of course you have, dear,” soothed the other, quickly; “and we shall keep on hunting, both of us, till we do find him–or die. But THIS sort of thing doesn’t help.”

“But I don’t want to do–anything else,” murmured Ruth Carew, drearily.

For a moment there was silence. The younger woman sat regarding her sister with troubled, disapproving eyes.

“Ruth,” she said, at last, with a touch of exasperation, “forgive me, but–are you always going to be like this? You’re widowed, I’ll admit; but your married life lasted only a year, and your husband was much older than yourself. You were little more than a child at the time, and that one short year can’t seem much more than a dream now. Surely that ought not to embitter your whole life!”

“No, oh, no,” murmured Mrs. Carew, still drearily.

“Then ARE you going to be always like this?”

“Well, of course, if I could find Jamie–”

“Yes, yes, I know; but, Ruth, dear, isn’t there anything in the world but Jamie–to make you ANY happy?”

“There doesn’t seem to be, that I can think of,” sighed Mrs. Carew, indifferently.

“Ruth!” ejaculated her sister, stung into something very like anger. Then suddenly she laughed. “Oh, Ruth, Ruth, I’d like to give you a dose of Pollyanna. I don’t know any one who needs it more!”

Mrs. Carew stiffened a little.

“Well, what pollyanna may be I don’t know, but whatever it is, I don’t want it,” she retorted sharply, nettled in her turn. “This isn’t your beloved Sanatorium, and I’m not your patient to be dosed and bossed, please remember.”