"But he won't be with us," said Phronsie slowly, and turning her brown eyes piteously to Polly.
"I know it," Polly smothered a sigh, "but we can't help it now. Grandpapa is feeling dreadfully; oh, Phronsie, you wouldn't make him sick, dear, for all the world!"
Phronsie unclasped her hands, and went unsteadily over to the old gentleman. "Joel will come on the next train, Grandpapa," she said.
"Bless me, yes, of course," said Mr. King, seizing her hand; "I don't see what we are making such a fuss for. He'll come on the next train."
"What's the riot?" asked Livingston Bayley, sauntering up, and whirling his walking-stick, "eh?"
"Joel's absconded," said Mr. Dyce briefly.
"Eh?"
"Gone back after Phronsie's box of dolls," explained somebody else.
"Oh dear me," cried Alexia Rhys, trying to get near Polly, "just like that boy." She still called him that, in spite of his being a Harvard man, "He's always making some sort of a fuss."
"Perhaps the train will be late," suggested Mrs. Dyce, who, as Mary Taylor, never could bear to see Phronsie unhappy. "Hamilton, if you don't do something to help that child, I shall be sorry I married you," she whispered in her husband's ear.