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32
Pollyanna Grows Up
32


Mrs. Carew laughed suddenly.

"Yes, my dear, I think I see," she answered demurely, though her eyes still carried—for them—a most unusual twinkle.

"All right," sighed Pollyanna contentedly. "I thought you would; still, it did sound sort of mixed when I said it. Oh, Aunt Polly says she wouldn't mind having an automobile, so much, if she could have the only one there was in the world, so there wouldn't be any one else to run into her; but— My! what a lot of houses!" broke off Pollyanna, looking about her with round eyes of wonder. "Don't they ever stop? Still, there'd have to be a lot of them for all those folks to live in, of course, that I saw at the station, besides all these here on the streets. And of course where there are more folks, there are more to know. I love folks. Don't you?"

"Love folks!"

"Yes, just folks, I mean. Anybody—everybody."

"Well, no, Pollyanna, I can't say that I do," replied Mrs. Carew, coldly, her brows contracted.

Mrs. Carew's eyes had lost their twinkle. They were turned rather mistrustfully, indeed, on Pollyanna. To herself Mrs. Carew was saying: "Now for preachment number one, I suppose, on my duty to mix with my fellow-men, à la Sister Della!"

"Don't you? Oh, I do," sighed Pollyanna. "They're all so nice and so different, you know. And down here there must be such a lot of them to be nice and different. Oh, you don't know how glad I am so soon that I came! I knew I would be, anyway,