"No, you're coming with me," said Alexia, hurrying after him. "Come, Polly, here's a seat. Here," and she waved frantically.
But Polly was already in the other carriage. And seeing this, Alexia was about to desert her charge, when Thomas, on the box of the forward conveyance, whipped up and off it went.
"O dear me!" cried Alexia; "somebody stop it. Why, Polly Pepper was going with me," and she was just about to jump out.
"No use, Alexia," said Pickering, who at the last moment had found himself crowded out of carriage number one, and putting her to one side as he helped Cathie in, and then David, at last he got in himself. "Don't you see they're a good bit on the way home already?"
"Yes, and here I am shut up in here with all of you, whom I don't want in the least to go with," cried Alexia, in the greatest dismay, sitting down in her corner too suddenly for comfort, as the horses started up, and waving her hands frantically.
"Thank you," said Pickering, with a low bow, "I'm sure we all feel much obliged to you."
"Well, I don't," said Cathie, in a dudgeon, "feel obliged a single bit, and I'm sure I didn't want to come with you, Alexia, only there wasn't room in the other carriage, so I had to."
"And I thought Polly Pepper was surely coming in this carriage," ran on Alexia, too vexed to stop herself, and turning anything but a sweet countenance upon the rest of the carriage-load. "She started for it."
"Don't look so at me, Alexia," said Pickering. "I'm not to blame; Clare took her off."
"It's just like Clare—always meddling," said Alexia, thoroughly out of temper. "Van Whitney, you're sitting all over my coat, and it's my best one, too," and she turned and twitched it away with an angry hand.