twasn't for the rejoicing
texts."

"The--WHAT?" The Rev. Paul Ford's eyes left the leaf and gazed
wonderingly into Pollyanna's merry little face.

"Well, that's what father used to call 'em," she laughed. "Of course the
Bible didn't name 'em that. But it's all those that begin 'Be glad in
the Lord,' or 'Rejoice greatly,' or 'Shout for joy,' and all that,
you know--such a lot of 'em. Once, when father felt specially bad, he
counted 'em. There were eight hundred of 'em."

"Eight hundred!"

"Yes--that told you to rejoice and be glad, you know; that's why father
named 'em the 'rejoicing texts.'"

"Oh!" There was an odd look on the minister's face. His eyes had fallen
to the words on the top paper in his hands--"But woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites!" "And so your father--liked those 'rejoicing
texts,'" he murmured.

"Oh, yes," nodded Pollyanna, emphatically. "He said he felt better right
away, that first day he thought to count 'em. He said if God took the
trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must
want us to do it--SOME. And father felt ashamed that he hadn't done it
more. After that, they got to be such a comfort to him, you know, when
things went wrong; when the Ladies' Aiders got to fight--I mean, when
they DIDN'T AGREE about something," corrected Pollyanna, hastily.
"Why, it was those texts, too, father said, that made HIM think of the
game--he began with ME on the crutches--but he said 'twas the rejoicing
texts that started him on it."

"And what game might that be?" asked the minister.

"About finding something in everything to be glad about, you know. As
I said, he began with me on the crutches." And once more Pollyanna
told her story--this time to a man who listened with tender eyes and
understanding ears.

A little later Pollyanna and the minister descended the hill, hand in
hand. Pollyanna's face was radiant. Pollyanna loved to talk, and she had
been talking now for some time: there seemed to be so many, many things
about the game, her father, and the old home life that the minister
wanted to know.

At the foot of the hill their ways parted, and Pollyanna down one road,
and the minister down another, walked on alone.

In the Rev. Paul Ford's study that evening the minister sat thinking.
Near him on the desk lay a few loose sheets of paper--his sermon notes.
Under the suspended pencil in his fingers lay other sheets of paper,
blank--his sermon to be. But the