"Yes, dear. What is it?"

"Well, it--it's Jimmy Bean," sighed Pollyanna. "He hasn't any
home except the Orphan one, and they're full, and don't want him,
anyhow, he thinks; so he wants another. He wants one of the
common kind, that has a mother instead of a Matron in it--folks,
you know, that'll care. He's ten years old going on eleven. I
thought some of you might like him--to live with you, you know."

"Well, did you ever!" murmured a voice, breaking the dazed pause
that followed Pollyanna's words.

With anxious eyes Pollyanna swept the circle of faces about her.

"Oh, I forgot to say; he will work," she supplemented eagerly.

Still there was silence; then, coldly, one or two women began to
question her. After a time they all had the story and began to
talk among themselves, animatedly, not quite pleasantly.

Pollyanna listened with growing anxiety. Some of what was said
she could not understand. She did gather, after a time, however,
that there was no woman there who had a home to give him, though
every woman seemed to think that some of the others might take
him, as there were several who had no little boys of their own
already in their homes. But there was no one who agreed herself
to take him. Then she heard the minister's wife suggest timidly
that they, as a society, might perhaps assume his support and
education instead of sending quite so much money this year to the
little boys in far-away India.