e had,
and what bang-up "folks" Mr. Pendleton made; and both had said that it
was all owing to her.

"Which makes me all the gladder, you know, that I HAVE had my legs,"
Pollyanna confided to her aunt afterwards.

The winter passed, and spring came. The anxious watchers over
Pollyanna's condition could see little change wrought by the prescribed
treatment. There seemed every reason to believe, indeed, that Dr. Mead's
worst fears would be realized--that Pollyanna would never walk again.

Beldingsville, of course, kept itself informed concerning Pollyanna; and
of Beldingsville, one man in particular fumed and fretted himself into
a fever of anxiety over the daily bulletins which he managed in some way
to procure from the bed of suffering. As the days passed, however,
and the news came to be no better, but rather worse, something besides
anxiety began to show in the man's face: despair, and a very dogged
determination, each fighting for the mastery. In the end, the dogged
determination won; and it was then that Mr. John Pendleton, somewhat
to his surprise, received one Saturday morning a call from Dr. Thomas
Chilton.

"Pendleton," began the doctor, abruptly, "I've come to you because you,
better than any one else in town, know something of my relations with
Miss Polly Harrington."

John Pendleton was conscious that he must have started visibly--he
did know something of the affair between Polly Harrington and Thomas
Chilton, but the matter had not been mentioned between them for fifteen
years, or more.

"Yes," he said, trying to make his voice sound concerned enough for
sympathy, and not eager enough for curiosity. In a moment he saw that he
need not have worried, however: the doctor was quite too intent on his
errand to notice how that errand was received.

"Pendleton, I want to see that child. I want to make an examination. I
MUST make an examination."

"Well--can't you?"

"CAN'T I! Pendleton, you know very well I haven't been inside that door
for more than fifteen years. You don't know--but I will tell you--that
the mistress of that house told me that the NEXT time she ASKED me to
enter it, I might take it that she was begging my pardon, and that all
would be as before--which meant that she'd marry me. Perhaps you see her
summoning me now--but I don't!"

"But couldn't you go--without a summons?"

The doctor frowned.

"Well, hardly. _I_ have some pride, you know."

"But if you're so anxious--couldn't y