“Oh, if it’s only for two days,” said Ben, drawing a long breath; “only, Mamsie, you have to work so hard, and there’s Polly.” He couldn’t get any further, and turned away to hide his face.
“Yes, there’s Polly,” said Mrs. Pepper, in her cheeriest fashion. “Well, now, Bensie,” and she laid both hands on his shoulders to turn him around again so that she could look into his blue eyes, “don’t feel badly. I believe it won’t hurt Polly, nor any of us, to look after that baby for a little while; trust mother.”
“If I could only do anything to help,” said Ben, looking helplessly down into the baby’s little face, all wrinkled up as it began to yawn. Then it rubbed its fists into its eyes, preparatory to being wide awake.
Meantime Joel and David were wild with delight, both boys scrabbling up on the bed by the side of Phronsie, and clamoring to know where it came from, and if it was really theirs, and how long it was going to stay, Phronsie all the while declaring it was her very own baby, and she was going to keep it always, till the bedroom was just a babel of sounds; and no one had a good chance to hear anything; and so of course no one did hear when the big green door opened, and somebody came in from the kitchen, until—“What you doin’ with my baby?” struck into the general din, in a sharp, high voice.
Joel and David slid off the big bed and stared at the intruder and Phronsie screamed, for it was the ragged, dirty, bad boy that ran away from the baby, to go fishing. Now, having had very poor luck, he went home, and getting the news in a grateful burst from his poor mother, sitting up with bandaged hands in her chair, he had bounded out and somehow traced the baby to the Little Brown House.
“It’s my baby!” he declared, with eyes flashing from his dirty face, and squaring up to them all, “and you’ve stole her.”
“Oh, how can you say so?” cried Polly, her brown eyes very stern; “and you ran away and left her.”
“Well, you’d no business to take her,” said the boy, doggedly, but he dropped his tousled head and dug one set of toes back and forth across the braided rug. “She’s my sister and I want her back.”
“Don’t let him have her, Polly!” screamed Phronsie, frantically clasping the little heap in the old quilt.
“Phronsie,” said Mother Pepper. At the sound of her voice, the dirty boy lifted up his head and stared at her.