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212
Pollyanna Grows Up


"Why, Jamie, I—I can't. There's the cake to frost—"

"Don't want it frosted."

"And the dusting—"

"Don't want it dusted."

"And the ordering to do for to-morrow."

"Give us crackers and milk. We'd lots rather have you and crackers and milk than a turkey dinner and not you."

"But I can't begin to tell you the things I've got to do to-day."

"Don't want you to begin to tell me," retorted Jamie, cheerfully. "I want you to stop telling me. Come, put on your bonnet. I saw Betty in the dining room, and she says she'll put our luncheon up. Now hurry."

"Why, Jamie, you ridiculous boy, I can't go," laughed Pollyanna, holding feebly back, as he tugged at her dress-sleeve. "I can't go to that picnic with you!"

But she went. She went not only then, but again and again. She could not help going, indeed, for she found arrayed against her not only Jamie, but Jimmy and Mr. Pendleton, to say nothing of Mrs. Carew and Sadie Dean, and even Aunt Polly herself.

"And of course I am glad to go," she would sigh happily, when some dreary bit of work was taken out of her hands in spite of all protesting. "But, surely, never before were there any boarders like mine—teasing for crackers-and-milk and cold things; and never before was there a boarding mistress like