“No, Miss. Your aunt doesn’t like ice-cream.”
Pollyanna’s face fell.[15]
“Oh, doesn’t she? I’m so sorry! Maybe Aunt Polly has got the carpets, though.”
“Yes, she’s got the carpets.”
“In every room?”
“Well, in almost every room,” answered Nancy, thinking about the attic room where there was no carpet.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” exulted Pollyanna. “I love carpets. And Mrs. White had pictures, too, perfectly beautiful ones of roses and little girls kneeling and a kitty and some lambs and a lion. Don’t you just love pictures?”
“I don’t know,” answered Nancy.
“I do. But we didn’t have any pictures. My![16] but isn’t this a perfectly beautiful house?” she broke off.
Chapter IV. The Little Attic Room
Miss Polly Harrington did not rise to meet her niece.
“How do you do, Pollyanna? I – ”.
“Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, I don’t know how to be glad enough that you let me come to live with you,” she was sobbing. “You don’t know how perfectly lovely it is to have you and Nancy and all this!”
“Nancy, you may go,” Aunt Polly said.
“We will go upstairs to your room, Pollyanna. Your trunk is already there, I presume. I told Timothy to take it up – if you had one. You may follow me.”
Without speaking, Pollyanna turned and followed her aunt from the room. Her eyes were filled with tears, but her chin was bravely high.
She was on the stairway now.
“Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly,” breathed the little girl; “what a perfectly lovely, lovely house! How awfully glad you must be you’re so rich!”
“PollyANNA!” ejaculated her aunt. “I’m surprised at you – making a speech like that to me!”
“Why, Aunt Polly, AREN’T you?” asked Pollyanna, in wonder.
“Certainly not, Pollyanna. How can I be proud of any gift the Lord has sent me?[17]” declared the lady.
Miss Polly turned and walked down the hall toward the attic stairway door. At the top of the stairs there were innumerable trunks and boxes. It was hot. Pollyanna lifted her head higher – it seemed so hard to breathe. Then she saw that her aunt threw open a door at the right.
“There, Pollyanna, here is your room, and your trunk is here. Do you have your key?”
Pollyanna nodded. Her eyes were a little wide and frightened.
Her aunt frowned.
“When I ask a question, Pollyanna, I prefer that you should answer aloud not merely with your head.”