with a haughtily permissive wave of his hand toward the chafing
drivers and chauffeurs, he strolled back to Pollyanna.

"Oh, that was splendid!" she greeted him, with shining eyes. "I love
to see you do it--and it's just like the Children of Israel crossing
the Red Sea, isn't it?--with you holding back the waves for the people
to cross. And how glad you must be all the time, that you can do it! I
used to think being a doctor was the very gladdest business there was,
but I reckon, after all, being a policeman is gladder yet--to help
frightened people like this, you know. And--" But with another
"Brrrr!" and an embarrassed laugh, the big blue-coated man was back in
the middle of the street, and Pollyanna was all alone on the
curbstone.

For only a minute longer did Pollyanna watch her fascinating "Red
Sea," then, with a regretful backward glance, she turned away.

"I reckon maybe I'd better be going home now," she meditated. "It must
be 'most dinner time." And briskly she started to walk back by the way
she had come.

Not until she had hesitated at several corners, and unwittingly made
two false turns, did Pollyanna grasp the fact that "going back home"
was not to be so easy as she had thought it to be. And not until she
came to a building which she knew she had never seen before, did she
fully realize that she had lost her way.

She was on a narrow street, dirty, and ill-paved. Dingy tenement
blocks and a few unattractive stores were on either side. All about
were jabbering men and chattering women--though not one word of what