"I know it," said Polly, pulling herself out of her gloom in an instant, to be as gay as ever, till the big sombre dining room seemed instinct with life, and the cheeriest place imaginable.
"What good times Americans do have!" exclaimed a lady, passing the door, and sending an envious glance within.
"Yes, if they're the right kind of Americans," said her companion, wisely.
All that wonderful day the sun seemed to shine more brightly than on any other day in the whole long year. And the two girls who had the birthday together, went here and there, arm in arm, to gladden all the tired, and often discontented, eyes of the fellow-travellers they chanced to meet. And when finally it came to the dusk, and Polly and Adela were obliged to say, "Our birthday is almost all over," why then, that was just the very time when Mother Fisher and the little doctor (for he was in the plan, you may be very sure, only he wanted her to make all the arrangements, "It's more in a woman's way, my dear," he had said),—well, then, that was their turn to celebrate the double birthday!
"Where are those girls?" cried the little doctor, fidgeting about, and knocking down a little table in his prancing across the room. Jasper ran and picked it up. "No harm done," he declared, setting the books straight again.
"O dear, did I knock that over?" asked Dr. Fisher, whirling around to look at the result of his progress. "Bless me, did I really do that?"
"It's all right now," said Jasper, with a laugh at the doctor's face.
"Lucky there wasn't anything that could break on the table."
"I should say so," declared the little doctor; "still, I'm sorry I floored these," with a rueful hand on the books. "I'd rather smash some other things that I know of than to hurt the feelings of a book. Dear me!"
"So had I," agreed Jasper, "to tell you the truth; but these aren't hurt; not a bit." He took up each volume, and carefully examined the binding.
When he saw that this was so, the little doctor began to fidget again, and to wonder where the girls were, and in his impatience he was on the point of prancing off once more across the room, when Jasper said, "Let us go and find them—you and I."