The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and hangings like
the hall; but through the west window the sun threw a long shaft
of gold across the floor, gleamed dully on the tarnished brass
andirons in the fireplace, and touched the nickel of the
telephone on the great desk in the middle of the room. It was
toward this desk that Pollyanna hurriedly tiptoed.

The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the floor. But
Pollyanna found it, and ran her shaking forefinger down through
the C's to "Chilton." In due time she had Dr. Chilton himself at
the other end of the wires, and was tremblingly delivering her
message and answering the doctor's terse, pertinent questions.
This done, she hung up the receiver and drew a long breath of
relief.

Only a brief glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a
confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined
walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors
(any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust,
dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved
door, still half open as she had left it.

In what seemed, even to the injured man, an incredibly short
time, Pollyanna was back in the woods at the man's side.

"Well, what is the trouble? Couldn't you get in?" he demanded.

Pollyanna opened wide her eyes.

"Why, of course I could! I'm HERE," she answered. "As if I'd be