"An excellent plan," said Dr. Fisher, hooking his arm into Jasper's and skipping off, Jasper having hard work to keep up with him.
"Here—where are you two going?" called Mr. King after them. And this hindered them so that Polly and Adela ran in unnoticed. And there they were on time after all; for it turned out that the little doctor's watch was five minutes ahead.
Well, and then they all filed into the big dining room, and there, to be sure, was their special table in the centre, and in the middle of it was a tall Dutch cake, ornamented with all sorts of nuts and fruits and candies, and gay with layers of frosting, edged and trimmed with coloured devices, and on the very tip-top of all was an elaborate figure in sugar of a little Dutch shepherdess. And around this wonderful cake were plates of mottoes, all trimmed in the Dutch fashion—in pink and green and yellow—while two big bunches of posies, lay one at each plate, of the two girls who had a birthday together in Old Amsterdam.
"Oh—oh!" cried Polly, seizing her bunch before she looked at the huge Dutch cake, and burying her nose deep among the big fragrant roses, "how perfectly lovely! Who did do this?"
But no one said a word. And the little doctor was as sober as a judge.
He only glared at them over his spectacles.
"Grandpapa," gasped Polly, "you did."
"Guess again," advised Grandpapa. "Mamsie—" Polly gave one radiant look at Mother Fisher's face.
Then Dr. Fisher broke out into a hearty laugh. "You've guessed it this time, Polly, my girl," he said, "your mother is the one."
"Your father really did it," corrected Mother Fisher. "Yes, Adoniram, you did,—only I saw to things a little, that's all."
"Which means that pretty much the whole business was hers," added the little doctor, possessing himself of her hand under cover of the table. "Well, girls, if you like your birthday party fixings, that's all your mother and I ask. It's Dutch, anyway, and what you won't be likely to get at home; there's so much to be said for it."