“Hem!” Mr. Brown cleared his throat, opened his mouth; then thought better of his determination to speak, and shut it with a snap.
“Good-by.” Mrs. Brown, with no eyes for any one but Phronsie, looked back until the turn of the road made it impossible to see any one, or even the little brown house.
“Now we must have the party and Joel’s pie,” said Mrs. Pepper, when the disconsolate little group was back in the kitchen. “And you may get the knife, Joey.” But first, there was a little talk between Polly and Joel and Mother Pepper. When it was all over, she said, “Yes, Polly, you and Joel may have some of the pie, and Joel must cut it now.” And no one peering in at the window would have thought that the chief treasure of the house had been seized that afternoon by a cruel hand.
They didn’t want any supper that night because of the custard pie and the lemonade. And after Phronsie was fast asleep in the trundle-bed, and the two boys were tucked safely away in the loft, Polly and Ben curled up on the floor, either side of her big chair.
“I can’t think, Mamsie,” began Ben, “who it could be.” He wrinkled up his round face in distress.
“No,” said Mrs. Pepper, “we can’t think. But oh, Polly child.” She put her hand on Polly’s brown hair and her voice trembled.
“Mamsie,” cried Polly, “don’t feel badly. I don’t mind—so very much.” She longed to put her head on her mother’s lap and cry, for she felt no bigger than Phronsie. Oh, the years that she had loved those beads, ever since she was a little girl and Mrs. Pepper had taken them out and told her that she was to have them when she was grown up, and then every time that this was done, and before the beads were wrapped up in the soft paper and put back in the drawer, the words of the father, who had died when Phronsie was a baby, would be said over again.
“Always remember, child,” Mrs. Pepper would say, “what your father told you. ‘You must be good, Polly, to be worthy to wear Grandma’s beads.’”
And Polly had always said, “I will.” And now the beads were gone—oh, could she bear it!
But she looked at Mother Pepper’s face, and what father had said meant, she very well knew, “help Mother,” so she swallowed the sobs that were almost out. And Ben, as he looked at her, set his teeth and concluded to do the same thing.