"Oh, no, Phronsie," corrected Polly, dancing up, "not till day after to-morrow. Jasper has to rest to-morrow, you know, after the journey." Then she ran off to see if there was really nothing she could do to make him comfortable. But little Doctor Fisher, who had come up in the carriage with Jasper from the station, already had whisked him off to his room, with injunctions for no one to see him again that day. So Polly flew back again to hang over Ben and try to get acquainted with Pip.
"He can draw. Oh, you just ought to see him, Polly," confided Ben over Pip's tow-colored head.
"Really, Ben?" said Polly.
"Really?—well, I should say!" Then Ben laughed. "I wish I could do half as well."
"Oh, Ben!" exclaimed Polly, incredulously. "Perhaps he can do something, but he couldn't draw like you. He couldn't."
"Well," said Ben, with a long breath, "I only wish I could make my things seem as if they moved, Polly. Now his do, and mine look stiff as sticks."
"They don't either," contradicted Polly, with an uncomfortable little twist. And she looked down at Pip not quite so pleasantly.
"What are you two chaffing about?" cried Alexia, rushing up with her "whirlwind air" on, as Pickering always called it.
"Oh, something," said Ben, with twinkling eyes.
"Now tell me," said Alexia, greedily. "What was it, Ben?"