"Yes, it is pleasant out here," she answered Polly; "but if you children are going to sit outside, you must have some wraps, for it is quite cool. Polly dear, just run in to get a shawl to put on, and bring the afghan to tuck around Alan. It's on the parlor sofa."
Polly vanished through the open door. When she came back, she was laughing.
"Why didn't you tell me they were in there, Jerusalem?" she asked, as she tossed the afghan to Alan, and then settled herself on a sweet-grass mat at her mother's feet. "Aunt Jane is reading aloud a report of something or other, and Mr. Baxter looks so bored. He yawned like a chasm when I went in."
"Perhaps you disturbed him in the middle of a nap," suggested
Alan.
"Maybe I did. I don't blame him for getting sleepy," responded Polly pityingly. "It all seemed to be about convict labor and penal servitude and such things. I shouldn't wonder if something was the matter in Russia."
Then they were silent, watching the lazy shadows from the full moon creep over the lawn, till there came a footstep on the walk and a voice called,—
"So you are all making the most of the moonlight, are you?"
"Oh, Papa Adams!" exclaimed Polly joyfully. "Home so early?"
"Yes," answered the doctor, as he dropped into the chair next Alan; "and I'm going to play all the rest of the evening. How comes on our future doctor?"
"Doctor!" echoed Polly. "He said to-night that he'd rather be an undertaker than anything else."