The great gray pile of looked very different to Pollyanna when she made her second visit to the house of Mr. John Pendleton. Windows were open, an elderly woman was hanging out clothes in the back yard, and the doctor's gig stood under the porte-cochere.  
As before Pollyanna went to the side door. This time she rang the bell—her fingers were not stiff to-day from a tight clutch on a bunch of keys.
 
A familiar-looking small dog bounded up the steps to greet her, but there was a slight delay before the woman who had been hanging out the clothes opened the door.
 
“If you please, I've brought some calf's-foot jelly for Mr. Pendleton,” smiled Pollyanna.
 
“Thank you,” said the woman, reaching for the bowl in the little girl's hand. “Who shall I say sent it? And it's calf's-foot jelly?”
 
The doctor, coming into the hall at that moment, heard the woman's words and saw the disappointed look on Pollyanna's face. He stepped quickly forward.
 
“Ah! Some calf's-foot jelly?” he asked . “That will be fine! Maybe you'd like to see our patient, eh?”
 
“Oh, yes, sir,” beamed Pollyanna; and the woman, in to a nod from the doctor, led the way down the hall at once, though plainly with vast surprise on her face.
 
Behind the doctor, a young man (a trained nurse from the nearest city) gave a disturbed .
 
“But, Doctor, didn't Mr. Pendleton give orders not to admit—any one?”
 
“Oh, yes,” nodded the doctor, . “But I'm giving orders now. I'll take the risk.” Then he added whimsically: “You don't know, of course; but that little girl is better than a six-quart bottle of any day. If anything or anybody can take the out of Pendleton this afternoon, she can. That's why I sent her in.”
 
“Who is she?”
 
For one brief moment the doctor hesitated.
 
“She's the niece of one of our best known residents. Her name is Pollyanna Whittier. I—I don't happen to enjoy a very extensive personal acquaintance with the little lady as yet; but lots of my patients do—I'm thankful to say!”
 
The nurse smiled.
 
“Indeed! And what are the special ingredients of this wonder-working—tonic of hers?”
 
The doctor shook his head.
 
“I don't know. As near as I can find out it is an overwhelming, unquenchable gladness for everything that has happened or is going to happen. At any rate, her speeches are constantly being repeated to me, and, as near as I can make out, 'just being glad' is the of most of them. All is,” he added, with another whimsical smile, as he stepped out on to the porch, “I wish I could prescribe her—and buy her—as I would a box of pills;—though if there gets to be many of her in the world, you and I might as well go to ribbon-selling and ditch-digging for all the money we'd get out of nursing and doctoring,” he laughed, picking up the and stepping into the gig.
 
Pollyanna, meanwhile, in accordance with the doctor's orders, was being escorted to John Pendleton's rooms.
 
Her way led through the great library at the end of the hall, and, rapid as was her progress through it, Pollyanna saw at once that great changes had taken place. The book-lined walls and the curtains were the same; but there was no litter on the floor, no untidiness on the desk, and not so much as a grain of dust in sight. The telephone card hung in its proper place, and the andirons had been polished. One of the mysterious doors was open, and it was toward this that the maid led the way. A moment later Pollyanna found herself in a furnished bedroom while the maid was saying in a frightened voice:
 
“If you please, sir, here—here's a little girl with some jelly. The doctor said I was to—to bring her in.”
 
The next moment Pollyanna found herself alone with a very cross-looking man lying flat on his back in bed.
 
“See here, didn't I say—” began an angry voice. “Oh, it's you!” it broke off not very graciously, as Pollyanna advanced toward the bed.
 
“Yes, sir,” smiled Pollyanna. “Oh, I'm so glad they let me in! You see, at first the lady 'most took my jelly, and I was so afraid I wasn't going to see you at all. Then the doctor came, and he said I might. Wasn't he lovely to let me see you?”
 
In spite of himself the man's lips into a smile; but all he said was “Humph!”
 
“And I've brought you some jelly,” resumed Pollyanna; “—calf's-foot. I hope you like it?” There was a rising inflection in her voice.
 
“Never ate it.” The smile had gone, and the had come back to the man's face.
 
For a brief instant Pollyanna's showed disappointment; but it cleared as she set the bowl of jelly down.
 
“Didn't you? Well, if you didn't, then you can't know you DON'T like it, anyhow, can you? So I reckon I'm glad you haven't, after all. Now, if you knew—”
 
“Yes, yes; well, there's one thing I know all right, and that is that I'm flat on my back right here this minute, and that I'm liable to stay here—till doomsday, I guess.”
 
Pollyanna looked shocked.
 
“Oh, no! It couldn't be till doomsday, you know, when the angel Gabriel blows his , unless it should come quicker than we think it will—oh, of course, I know the Bible says it may come quicker than we think, but I don't think it will—that is, of course I believe the Bible; but I mean I don't think it will come as much quicker as it would if it should come now, and—”
 
John Pendleton laughed suddenly—and aloud. The nurse, coming in at that moment, heard the laugh, and beat a hurried—but a very silent—retreat. He had the air of a frightened cook who, seeing the danger of a breath of cold air striking a half-done cake, hastily shuts the oven door.
 
“Aren't you getting a little mixed?” asked John Pendleton of Pollyanna.
 
The little girl laughed.
 
“Maybe. But what I mean is, that legs don't last—broken ones, you know—like lifelong , same as Mrs. Snow has got. So yours won't last till doomsday at all. I should think you could be glad of that.”
 
“Oh, I am,” retorted the man grimly.
 
“And you didn't break but one. You can be glad 'twasn't two.” Pollyanna was warming to her task.
 
“Of course! So fortunate,” the man, with uplifted ; “looking at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might be glad I wasn't a centipede and didn't break fifty!”
 
Pollyanna .
 
“Oh, that's the best yet,” she crowed. “I know what a centipede is; they've got lots of legs. And you can be glad—”
 
“Oh, of course,” interrupted the man, sharply, all the old bitterness coming back to his voice; “I can be glad, too, for all the rest, I suppose—the nurse, and the doctor, and that confounded woman in the kitchen!”
 
“Why, yes, sir—only think how bad 'twould be if you DIDN'T have them!”
 
“Well, I—eh?” he demanded sharply.
 
“Why, I say, only think how bad it would be if you didn't have 'em—and you lying here like this!”
 
“As if that wasn't the very thing that was at the bottom of the whole matter,” retorted the man, , “because I am lying here like this! And yet you expect me to say I'm glad because of a fool woman who disarranges the whole house and calls it 'regulating,' and a man who aids and her in it, and calls it 'nursing,' to say nothing of the doctor who eggs 'em both on—and the whole bunch of them, meanwhile, expecting me to pay them for it, and pay them well, too!”
 
Pollyanna frowned sympathetically.
 
“Yes, I know. THAT part is too bad—about the money—when you've been saving it, too, all this time.”
 
“When—eh?”
 
“Saving it—buying beans and fish balls, you know. Say, DO you like beans?—or do you like turkey better, only on account of the sixty cents?”
 
“Look a-here, child, what are you talking about?”
 
Pollyanna smiled radiantly.
 
“About your money, you ............