"Oh! she went out a little while after Baby's exit," said Jasper, trying to speak lightly.
"Mr. Loughead thinks she'd do it, if I asked her," Polly went on in her brightest way. "Now, that will be lovely, and the children will enjoy it so much."
"Isn't there anything I could do?" asked Jack Loughead, after the
Dunraven entertainment had been a bit discussed.
Mr. King bowed his courtly old head. "I don't believe there is anything.
You are very kind, I'm sure."
"Don't speak of kindness, sir," he said. "My time hangs heavy on my hands just now."
"He would like to be with his sister," said Jasper, after a glance at
Polly's face, and guilty of an aside to his father.
"Oh!—yes," said Mr. King, "to be sure. Well, Mr. Loughead, and what would you like to do for these poor children of Phronsie's Christmas Day? We shall be very glad of your assistance."
"I could bring out a stereopticon," said Jack; "no very new idea, but I've a few pictures of places I've seen, and maybe the children would like it for a half-hour or so."
"Capital, capital," pronounced the old gentleman quite as if he had proposed it. And before any one knew how it had come about, there was Jack Loughead talking over the run down to Bedford with them all on Christmas morning, as a matter of course, and as if it had been the annual affair to him, that it was to all the others.
"Quite a fine young man," said Mr. King, when Jack had at last run off with a bright smile and word for all, "and Phronsie will be so pleased to think of his doing all this for her poor children. Bless her! Well, David, my man, are you back so soon?"