WHICH IS MORE SURPRISING
did," he repeated, in answer to the shocked denial in her face. "And that only goes to prove all the more how I need you, little girl," he added, his voice softening into tender pleading once more. "If ever, ever I am to play the 'glad game,' Pollyanna, you'll have to come and play it with me."
The little girl's forehead puckered into a wistful frown.
"Aunt Polly has been so good to me," she began; but the man interrupted her sharply. The old irritability had come back to his face. Impatience which would brook no opposition had been a part of John Pendleton's nature too long to yield very easily now to restraint.
"Of course she's been good to you! But she doesn't want you, I'll warrant, half so much as I do," he contested.
"Why, Mr. Pendleton, she's glad, I know, to have—"
"Glad!" interrupted the man, thoroughly losing his patience now. "I'll wager Miss Polly doesn't know how to be glad—for anything! Oh, she does her duty, I know. She's a very dutiful woman. I've had experience with her 'duty,' before. I'll acknowledge we haven't been the best of friends for the last fifteen or twenty years. But I know her. Every one knows her—and she isn't the 'glad' kind, Pollyanna. She doesn't know how to
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