na frowned thoughtfully.

"Why, I don't remember. Not much, I reckon. Oh, he did say he could well
imagine you did want to see me."

"Oh, did he, indeed!" answered John Pendleton. And Pollyanna wondered
why he gave that sudden queer little laugh.

CHAPTER XXI. A QUESTION ANSWERED

The sky was darkening fast with what appeared to be an approaching
thunder shower when Pollyanna hurried down the hill from John
Pendleton's house. Half-way home she met Nancy with an umbrella. By that
time, however, the clouds had shifted their position and the shower was
not so imminent.

"Guess it's goin' 'round ter the north," announced Nancy, eyeing the sky
critically. "I thought 'twas, all the time, but Miss Polly wanted me ter
come with this. She was WORRIED about ye!"

"Was she?" murmured Pollyanna abstractedly, eyeing the clouds in her
turn.

Nancy sniffed a little.

"You don't seem ter notice what I said," she observed aggrievedly. "I
said yer aunt was WORRIED about ye!"

"Oh," sighed Pollyanna, remembering suddenly the question she was so
soon to ask her aunt. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare her."

"Well, I'm glad," retorted Nancy, unexpectedly. "I am, I am."

Pollyanna stared.

"GLAD that Aunt Polly was scared about me! Why, Nancy, THAT isn't the
way to play the game--to be glad for things like that!" she objected.

"There wa'n't no game in it," retorted Nancy. "Never thought of it. YOU
don't seem ter sense what it means ter have Miss Polly WORRIED about ye,
child!"

"Why, it means worried--and worried is horrid--to feel," maintained
Pollyanna. "What else can it mean?"

Nancy tossed her head.

"Well, I'll tell ye what it means. It means she's at last gettin' down
somewheres near human--like folks; an' that she ain't jest doin' her
duty by ye all the time."

"Why, Nancy," demurred the scandalized Pollyanna, "Aunt Polly always
does her duty. She--she's a very dutiful woman!" Unconsciously Pollyanna
repeated John Pendleton's words of half an hour before.

Nancy chuckled.

"You're right she is--and she always was, I guess! But she's somethin'
more, now, since you came."

Pollyanna's face changed. Her brows drew into a troubled frown.

"There, that's what I was going to ask you, Nancy," she sighed. "Do you
think Aunt Polly likes to have me here? Would she mind--if if I wasn't
here any more?"

Nancy threw a quick look into the little girl's absorbed face. She had
expected to be asked this question lon