“Grandma Bascom?” repeated Polly. “Oh, Joe, you didn’t ask for them; Mamsie’d be so sorry.”
“No,” said Joel, “I didn’t ask for one single old pin,” and he cocked up one black eye at her, but he didn’t stop working with his hands. “She asked me to stay and I told her I couldn’t ’cause Dave and me was hunting for pins, and she said she’d got some only they were crooked— Ow—get away, Dave,—you’re on my place—”
“Go on, tell what else she said,” commanded Polly, beginning to breathe freer.
“And then she said I could have ’em as well as not, ’cause she was going to throw them away when she got round to cleaning out the drawers—”
“Are you sure?” asked Polly, as he began to regard his work again very closely.
“When she got round to cleaning out the drawers,” repeated Joel, in a very high voice to be the better understood.
“Well, I am glad,” said Polly, with a long breath, “that you didn’t ask for them, Joe,” and she ran back to her work with a light heart.
“I’ve found one,” announced Phronsie, holding up a big pin; “I have, Joel.”
“Well, put it in the box,” said Joel. So Phronsie dropped the bent and twisted pin in the little pasteboard box, and then she had to get up to run over and tell Polly about it, before she hurried back to get on the floor and hunt alongside of the two boys for more.
“And I shall pin on the feathers from the duster with that very pin,” Polly decided to herself as she worked busily away, “because Grandma gave them to us as well as the crooked pins!”