“Small cabin up for’ad,” responded the Admiral. “Why, matey?”
“Is it anywhere near the lobscouse?” asked Polly anxiously, tapping her under lip with her pencil.
The Admiral laughed till the tears came in his eyes, and he had to blow his nose vigorously.
“I’m sure I don’t see why that’s funny,” protested Polly with dignity. “It says here that they tackled the lobscouse in the cuddy.”
“I haven’t the least doubt of it,” laughed the Admiral heartily, “and not one scrap did they leave to throw to the porpoises, either, did they?”
But Polly refused to be teased, or daunted in her purpose. When the girls arrived on Saturday afternoon, she was prepared to meet them, and very businesslike and imposing the library appeared with the earnest faces gathered around the old flat-topped mahogany table that stood in its center.
“We all came, Polly,” said Sue, fanning her flushed face with a blotter, comfortably. Sue rarely stopped for the fitness of things. If she needed anything at all, she always took the first substitute at hand, rather than go without. “It’s getting pretty warm weather, sister clubbers, know it?”
“Sister clubbers?” repeated Isabel. “Sue, how you do talk.”
“Well, it is hot, all the same, isn’t it, Polly?”
Polly laughed, and stepped to the doorway to receive from Aunty Welcome’s hands a generous tray with ice-cold fruit lemonade in a tall cut glass pitcher, covered with a snowy napkin, and a plate of fresh honey jumbles.