that is--I can't tell it unless I tell
other things that--that I'm not to speak of."

It was on Miss Polly's tongue to question her niece further; but the
obvious distress on the little girl's face stayed the words before they
were uttered.

Not long after Mrs. Tarbell's visit, the climax came. It came in the
shape of a call from a certain young woman with unnaturally pink cheeks
and abnormally yellow hair; a young woman who wore high heels and cheap
jewelry; a young woman whom Miss Polly knew very well by reputation--but
whom she was angrily amazed to meet beneath the roof of the Harrington
homestead.

Miss Polly did not offer her hand. She drew back, indeed, as she entered
the room.

The woman rose at once. Her eyes were very red, as if she had been
crying. Half defiantly she asked if she might, for a moment, see the
little girl, Pollyanna.

Miss Polly said no. She began to say it very sternly; but something in
the woman's pleading eyes made her add the civil explanation that no one
was allowed yet to see Pollyanna.

The woman hesitated; then a little brusquely she spoke. Her chin was
still at a slightly defiant tilt.

"My name is Mrs. Payson--Mrs. Tom Payson. I presume you've heard of
me--most of the good people in the town have--and maybe some of the
things you've heard ain't true. But never mind that. It's about the
little girl I came. I heard about the accident, and--and it broke me
all up. Last week I heard how she couldn't ever walk again, and--and
I wished I could give up my two uselessly well legs for hers. She'd
do more good trotting around on 'em one hour than I could in a hundred
years. But never mind that. Legs ain't always given to the one who can
make the best use of 'em, I notice."

She paused, and cleared her throat; but when she resumed her voice was
still husky.

"Maybe you don't know it, but I've seen a good deal of that little girl
of yours. We live on the Pendleton Hill road, and she used to go by
often--only she didn't always GO BY. She came in and played with the
kids and talked to me--and my man, when he was home. She seemed to like
it, and to like us. She didn't know, I suspect, that her kind of folks
don't generally call on my kind. Maybe if they DID call more, Miss
Harrington, there wouldn't be so many--of my kind," she added, with
sudden bitterness.

"Be that as it may, she came; and she didn't do herself no harm, and she
did do us good--a lot o' good. How much she won't know