It was sometime during the next forenoon that Pollyanna opened conscious eyes and realized where she was.

“Why, Aunt Polly, what’s the matter?  Isn’t it daytime?  Why don’t I get up?” she cried.  “Why, Aunt Polly, I can’t get up,” she moaned, falling back on the pillow, after an ineffectual attempt to lift herself.

“No, dear, I wouldn’t try—­just yet,” soothed her aunt quickly, but very quietly.

“But what is the matter?  Why can’t I get up?”

Miss Polly’s eyes asked an agonized question of the white-capped young woman standing in the window, out of the range of Pollyanna’s eyes.

The young woman nodded.

“Tell her,” the lips said.

Miss Polly cleared her throat, and tried to swallow the lump that would scarcely let her speak.

“You were hurt, dear, by the automobile last night.  But never mind that now.  Auntie wants you to rest and go to sleep again.”

“Hurt?  Oh, yes; I—­I ran.”  Pollyanna’s eyes were dazed.  She lifted her hand to her forehead.  “Why, it’s—­done up, and it—­hurts!”

“Yes, dear; but never mind.  Just—­just rest.”

“But, Aunt Polly, I feel so funny, and so bad!  My legs feel so—­so queer—­only they don’t feel—­at all!”

With an imploring look into the nurse’s face, Miss Polly struggled to her feet, and turned away.  The nurse came forward quickly.

“Suppose you let me talk to you now,” she began cheerily.  “I’m sure I think it’s high time we were getting acquainted, and I’m going to introduce myself.  I am Miss Hunt, and I’ve come to help your aunt take care of you.  And the very first thing I’m going to do is to ask you to swallow these little white pills for me.”

Pollyanna’s eyes grew a bit wild.

“But I don’t want to be taken care of—­that is, not for long!  I want to get up.  You know I go to school.  Can’t I go to school to-morrow?”

From the window where Aunt Polly stood now there came a half-stifled cry.

“To-morrow?” smiled the nurse, brightly.

“Well, I may not let you out quite so soon as that, Miss Pollyanna.  But just swallow these little pills for me, please, and we’ll see what they’ll do.”

“All right,” agreed Pollyanna, somewhat doubtfully; “but I must go to school day after to-morrow—­there are examinations then, you know.”

She spoke again, a minute later.  She spoke of school, and of the automobile, and of how her head ached; but very soon her voice trailed into silence under the blessed influence of the little white pills she had swallowed.

CHAPTER XXIV.  JOHN PENDLETON

Pollyanna did not go to school “to-morrow,” nor the “day after to-morrow.”  Pollyanna, however, did not realize this, except momentarily when a brief period of full consciousness sent insistent questions to her lips.  Pollyanna did not realize anything, in fact, very clearly until a week had passed; then the fever subsided, the pain lessened somewhat, and her mind awoke to full consciousness.  She had then to be told all over again what had occurred.