“Not our Davie!” exclaimed Ben, nearly tumbling off the stone wall; “why, he’s too little. You must be dreaming, Polly.”
“Indeed I’m not dreaming,” declared Polly indignantly; “and Davie wouldn’t ever say things that aren’t so. You know that, Ben Pepper.”
“Yes, I know,” said Ben—but he looked very puzzled.
“And anyway, even if we don’t understand it,” said Polly wisely, “why it’s so. And just think what a help to Mamsie. And it’s come when I was so bad this very morning.”
“You weren’t bad,” declared Ben again. And there they had it all over again.
“But you will be—we shall both be,” he wound up with a laugh, “if we sit here on this stone wall much longer.”
“That’s so,” said Polly, with a little laugh, and hopping off from the wall, they both ran off, hand in hand, down the road to the little brown house.
When they got there everything was in a truly dreadful state. There lay Joel, face down on the floor, crying as if his heart would break. “I want to go to help in the store,” he screamed over and over, till nobody else had a chance to be heard. David was hanging over him in the greatest distress, saying, “I won’t go, Joey—you may go, Joey.”
Mrs. Pepper shook her head, and said quietly, “Oh, yes, Davie, you must go; you have promised Mr. Atkins.”
“I want to tie up bundles,” screamed Joel, kicking his heels on the floor. “O dear—dear—boo—hoo—hoo!”