As the warm August days passed, Pollyanna went very frequently to the house of Mr. Pendleton. He talked to her and showed her many strange and beautiful things – books, pictures. He obviously liked her.

Pollyanna never doubted now that John Pendleton some time ago was her Aunt Polly’s lover; and with all the strength of her loving heart she tried to bring happiness into their lonely lives.

She also talked to Mr. Pendleton about her aunt; and he listened, sometimes politely, sometimes irritably. She talked to her aunt about Mr. Pendleton. Usually Miss Polly didn’t listen. She always found something else to talk about.

One day, making an early morning call on John Pendleton, found the flaming band of blue and gold and green and red and violet lying across his pillow.

“Mr. Pendleton, it’s a real rainbow!” she exclaimed. “How pretty it is! But how DID it get in?” she cried.

The man laughed a little grimly.

“Well, I suppose it ‘got in’ through the glass thermometer in the window. The sun shouldn’t strike it at all but it does in the morning.”

“Oh, it’s so pretty, Mr. Pendleton! And does just the sun do that?”

Suddenly a thought came to Mr. Pendleton. He touched the bell.

“Nora,” he said, when his maid appeared at the door, “bring me a big brass candlestick from the drawing-room.”

“Yes, sir,” murmured the woman. A musical tinkling entered the room with her as she advanced toward the bed. It came from the prism pendants encircling the old-fashioned candelabrum in her hand.

“Thank you. You may stand it here,” directed the man.

As the maid left the room he turned smiling eyes toward Pollyanna.

“Bring me the candlestick now, please, Pollyanna.”

With both hands she brought it; and in a moment he was slipping off the pendants, until they lay, side by side, on the bed.

“Now, my dear, take the string from my table and hook the pendants to it across the window.”

When she finished, she stepped back with a cry of delight. Everywhere in the room were bits of dancing red and green, violet and orange, gold and blue. The wall, the floor, and the furniture, even to the bed, were aflame with shimmering bits of color.

“Oh, how lovely!” breathed Pollyanna; then she laughed suddenly. “I reckon the sun himself is trying to play my game now!” she cried, forgetting for the moment that Mr. Pendleton could not know what she was talking about.

“Oh, I forgot. You don’t know about the game. I remember now.”

“Suppose you tell me, then.”

And this time Pollyanna told him everything about her “being glad” game.

For a moment there was silence. Then a low voice from the bed said unsteadily:

“Perhaps; now I know the best prism of them is you, Pollyanna.”

“Oh, but I don’t show beautiful red and green and purple when the sun shines through me, Mr. Pendleton!”

“Don’t you?” smiled the man. And Pollyanna, looking into his face, wondered why there were tears in his eyes.

“No,” she said. “I’m afraid, Mr. Pendleton, the sun make just freckles on my face!”

Pollyanna looked at him. His laugh had sounded almost like a sob.