"And here's your spoon," said her mother, bringing it. "Now, child, enjoy it to your heart's content."
Phronsie set the spoon within the cracked skin, and drew it out half-full. "Oh, Mamsie!" she cried, as her teeth closed over it, "do just taste; it's so good!"
"Hee-hee!" laughed Sarah, "I guess 'tis. Such works as I had to bake dat apple just right. But he's a beauty, ain't he, though?"
Phronsie did not reply, being just at that moment engaged in conveying a morsel as much like her own as possible, to her mother's mouth.
"Seems to me I never tasted such an apple," said Mother Fisher, slowly swallowing the bit.
"Did you, now?" cried Sarah.
Downstairs Polly was dancing around the music-room with three or four girls who had dropped in on their way from school.
"Give me a waltz now, Polly," begged Philena. "Dear me, I haven't had a sight of you hardly, for so long, I am positively starved for you. I don't care for you other girls now," she cried, as the two went whirling down the long room together.
"Thank you, Miss Philena," cried the others, seizing their partners and whirling off too.
"I feel as if I could dance forever," cried Polly, when Amy Garrett turned away from the piano and declared she would play no more—and she still pirouetted on one foot, to come up red as a rose to the group.