"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.
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