"No, no," cried Amy Garrett, "she's coming here!"
"I call that nice," exclaimed Alexia decidedly, "when I asked her to come across the room! I'm going to sit next to her of course."
"You'd much better have stayed with me," laughed Mr. Hamilton Dyce, "since there'll be one long fight over you. Better come back."
But Miss Mary, protesting that the girls needed her, finally settled it by getting her chair into the middle of the group, which she made into a circle.
"There, now, we're all comfy together," she announced. "Now, Mr. Dyce, you must read us something."
"Oh, tell us a story," put in Alexia, who didn't relish listening to reading.
"Oh, yes, a story, a story," they one and all took it up. Even Phronsie laid down her big needle which she was patiently dragging back and forth, with a very long piece of red worsted following its trail across the face of her "cushion-pin" in a way to suit her own design, to beg for the story.
"Oh, Phronsie!" exclaimed Polly, for the first time catching sight of this, "you can't work with such a long thread. Let me cut off some of it, do."
"Oh, no, no," protested Phronsie, edging off in alarm.
"Why, it'll get all knotted up," said Polly, in concern; "you better let me take off a little—just a little, teenty bit, Phronsie."