[5]. He thought, however, that you might wish to take the child and bring her up. Hence I am writing to you.
“Hoping to hear favorably from you soon, I remain,
“Respectfully yours,
“Jeremiah O. White.”
Miss Polly answered the letter the day before, and she had said she would take the child,[6] of course.
As she sat now, with the letter in her hands, her thoughts went back to her sister, Jennie, Pollianna’s mother, and to the time when Jennie, as a girl of twenty, married the young minister and went south with him. The family had little more to do with the missionary’s wife.
In one of her letters Jennie wrote about Pollyanna, her last baby, the other babies had all died. She named her “Pollyanna” for her two sisters, Polly and Anna.
A few years later they received the news of her death, told in a short, but heart-broken little note from the minister himself.
Miss Polly, looking out at the valley below, thought of the changes those twenty-five years had brought to her. She was forty now, and quite alone in the world. Father, mother, sisters – all were dead. She was mistress of the house and of the thousands left to her by her father. There were people who pitied her lonely life.
Miss Polly rose with frowning face. She was glad, of course, that she was a good woman, and that she not only knew her duty, but had strength of character to perform it. But – POLLYANNA! – what a ridiculous name!
Chapter II. Old Tom and Nancy
In the garden that afternoon, Nancy found a few minutes in which to interview Old Tom, the gardener.
“Mr. Tom, do you know that a little girl will soon come here to live with Miss Polly?”
“A – what?” demanded the old man.
“A little girl – to live with Miss Polly. She told me so herself,” said Nancy. “It’s her niece; and she’s eleven years old.”
The man’s jaw fell.[7]
“Oh, it must be Miss Jennie’s little girl!”
“Who was Miss Jennie?”
“She was an angel,” breathed the man; “but the old master and mistress knew her as their oldest daughter. She was twenty when she married and went away from here long years ago. Her babies all died, I heard, except the last one; and that must be her.”
“And she’s going to sleep in the attic – more shame to HER!” scolded Nancy.
Old Tom smiled.
“I wonder what Miss Polly will do with a child in the house,” he said.