Phronsie stole out of the bedroom, and came slowly up to her mother's side, pausing a bit on the way to look into Polly's absorbed face.
"I don't think, Mamsie," she said quietly, "that people ought to be so very good who've never had a little brown house; never in all their lives."
"Oh, yes, they had, child," said Mrs. Pepper briskly; "places don't make any difference. It's people's duty to be good wherever they are."
But Phronsie's face expressed great incredulity.
"I'm always going to live here when I am a big, grown-up woman," she declared, slowly gazing around the kitchen, "and I shall never, never go out of Badgertown."
"Oh, Phronsie!" exclaimed Polly, turning around in dismay, "why, you couldn't do that. Just think, child, whatever in the world would Grandpapa do, or any of us, pray tell?"
"Grandpapa would come here," declared Phronsie decidedly, and shaking her yellow head to enforce her statement. "Of course Grandpapa would come here, Polly. We couldn't live without him."
"That's it," said Polly, with a corresponding shake of her brown head, "of course we couldn't live without Grandpapa; and just as 'of course' he couldn't leave his own dear home. He never would be happy, Phronsie, to do that."
Phronsie took a step or two into the sunshine lying on the middle of the old kitchen floor. "Then I'd rather not come, Polly," she said. But she sighed and Polly was just about saying, "We'll run down now and then perhaps, Phronsie, as we have done now," when the door was thrown open suddenly, and Joel burst in, his face as white as a sheet, and working fearfully.
"Oh, Polly! you must tell Mrs. Whitney—I can't."