er task.

"Of course! So fortunate," sniffed the man, with uplifted eyebrows;
"looking at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might be glad I wasn't
a centipede and didn't break fifty!"

Pollyanna chuckled.

"Oh, that's the best yet," she crowed. "I know what a centipede is;
they've got lots of legs. And you can be glad--"

"Oh, of course," interrupted the man, sharply, all the old bitterness
coming back to his voice; "I can be glad, too, for all the rest, I
suppose--the nurse, and the doctor, and that confounded woman in the
kitchen!"

"Why, yes, sir--only think how bad 'twould be if you DIDN'T have them!"

"Well, I--eh?" he demanded sharply.

"Why, I say, only think how bad it would be if you didn't have 'em--and
you lying here like this!"

"As if that wasn't the very thing that was at the bottom of the whole
matter," retorted the man, testily, "because I am lying here like
this! And yet you expect me to say I'm glad because of a fool woman who
disarranges the whole house and calls it 'regulating,' and a man who
aids and abets her in it, and calls it 'nursing,' to say nothing of the
doctor who eggs 'em both on--and the whole bunch of them, meanwhile,
expecting me to pay them for it, and pay them well, too!"

Pollyanna frowned sympathetically.

"Yes, I know. THAT part is too bad--about the money--when you've been
saving it, too, all this time."

"When--eh?"

"Saving it--buying beans and fish balls, you know. Say, DO you like
beans?--or do you like turkey better, only on account of the sixty
cents?"

"Look a-here, child, what are you talking about?"

Pollyanna smiled radiantly.

"About your money, you know--denying yourself, and saving it for the
heathen. You see, I found out about it. Why, Mr. Pendleton, that's one
of the ways I knew you weren't cross inside. Nancy told me."

The man's jaw dropped.

"Nancy told you I was saving money for the--Well, may I inquire who
Nancy is?"

"Our Nancy. She works for Aunt Polly."

"Aunt Polly! Well, who is Aunt Polly?"

"She's Miss Polly Harrington. I live with her."

The man made a sudden movement.

"Miss--Polly--Harrington!" he breathed. "You live with--HER!"

"Yes; I'm her niece. She's taken me to bring up--on account of my
mother, you know," faltered Pollyanna, in a low voice. "She was her
sister. And after father--went to be with her and the rest of us in
Heaven, there wasn't any one left for me down here but the Ladies' Aid;
so she took me."