"Of course! So fortunate," sniffed the man, with uplifted
eyebrows; "looking at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might
be glad I wasn't a centipede and didn't break fifty!"

Pollyanna chuckled.

"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, testily, "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 abets 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