"I think I should," said Polly, slowly, bringing her gaze around over the sea, to the Dunes, the beach, with the crowds of people of all nationalities, and the peasant folk, "if we could stay just as long, for all that, at the dear old Hague."
And just then old Mr. King was saying to Phronsie, "We will come out here again, child, and stay a week. Yes," he said to himself, "I will engage the rooms before we go back this afternoon."
"Grandpapa," asked Phronsie, laying her hand on his knee, "can I have this very same little house next time we come?"
"Well, I don't know," said Mr. King, peering up and down Phronsie's Bath chair adorned with the most lively descriptions of the merits of cocoa as a food; "they're all alike as two peas, except for the matter of the chocolate and cocoa trimmings. But perhaps I can fix it, Phronsie, so that you can have this identical one," mentally resolving to do that very thing. "Well, come, Phronsie, we must go now and get our luncheon."
"I am so glad if I can have the same little house," said Phronsie, with a sigh of contentment, as she slowly got out of her Bath chair. "It is a nice little house, Grandpapa, and I love it very much."
IX
A BOX FOR THE PEPPER BOYS
"Mamsie, have we been here a whole week in Amsterdam," cried Polly, leaning out of the window to look up and down the canal where the many-coloured boats lay, "beside all those days at Scheveningen? I can't believe it!"
"It doesn't seem possible," Mother Fisher answered musingly, and her hands dropped to her lap, where they lay quietly folded.
"Mamsie,"—Polly suddenly drew in her gaze from the charming old canal and its boats, and sprang to Mrs. Fisher's side,—"do you know, I think it was just the loveliest thing in all the world for Grandpapa to bring dear Mr. and Mrs. Henderson abroad with us? I do, Mamsie."