“Don’t stop for me,” she told Polly. “It was too lonesome with you all up here. I locked up, ’cause I knew you’d ask me.”
“You don’t think there’s any danger in leaving the house quite alone, do you?” inquired the White Nurse anxiously.
Benedicta laughed. “It’s safe as Sunday,” she answered. “I’ve set a chair right in front of the front door, and anybody that knows me knows that means nobody’s home.”
“Oh, but, Benedicta,” the White Nurse protested, “if a tramp should come along, it would tell him there isn’t a soul in the house, and he’d steal everything he could lay hold of!”
“Tramp!” scorned the housekeeper. “Never but a solitary one ever did meander up here, an’ he’d lost his way and was on the road back when Young Ben met him.”
“I think there is not the slightest danger,” Polly reassured those that had begun to look worried.
“Do tell another story!” pleaded Jozy.
“About the twin that didn’t know himself!” suggested Grissel.
“Oh, no!” cried Timmy; “let’s have that one about the boy who killed the big wolf and got the money to go to school with.”
“No, don’t!” shivered Muriel. “Please tell about the Ten Little Girls and Mr. Cross.”