She wished, uneasily, that she could "do something." It was this, perhaps, that caused her to say in a timid voice: "Dr.Chilton, I should think being a doctor would, be the very gladdest kind of a business there was." The doctor turned in surprise.
"'Gladdest'!--when I see so much suffering always, everywhere I go ?" he cried.
She nodded.
"I know; but you're HELPING it--don't you see ?--and of course you're glad to help it! And so that makes you the gladdest of any of us, all the time." The doctor's eyes filled with sudden hot tears.

The doctor's life was a singularly lonely one.

He had no wife and no home save his two-room office in a boarding house.

His profession was very dear to him.

Looking now into Pollyanna's shining eyes, he felt as if a loving hand had been suddenly laid on his head in blessing.