"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 long before, and she had dreaded it. She had wondered how she should answer it--how she could answer it honestly without cruelly hurting the questioner. But now, NOW, in the face of the new suspicions that had become convictions by the afternoon's umbrella-sending--Nancy only welcomed the question with open arms. She was sure that, with a clean conscience to-day, she could set the love-hungry little girl's heart at rest.