POLLY and Jasper and the children were home once more, and everything was back in the old ways, with Joel in his parish, and David in his instructor’s chair at the college. And now an intense excitement filled all the minds of the “Peppers” and their friends over the approaching “Welcome-Home” they were to give Phronsie.
“It shall be just as splendid as the wedding would have been!” declared Alexia positively. “Just as bride-y and stunning as it can possibly be!” she would cry, on one of her rushing-in-and-out visits to “The Oaks.”
“Do tell me, are the Dunraven Home children surely to be here?” she asked one day, bursting into Polly’s room, to find her surrounded by a cloud of white muslin, and clashing her scissors in and out of little skirt breadths. “Oh, my goodness me! what are you doing, Polly Pepper?”
“Yes,” cried Polly happily, and sending her scissors down another breadth; “and these are their dresses, Alexia. Don’t you want to get another pair of scissors, and help cut off the skirts? Miss Bangs down in the village is going to make them.”
“Yes, indeed!” cried Alexia, plunging over to Polly’s neat work-basket. “Oh, dear!” as she rummaged it; “I can’t find another pair, Polly!”
“In the sewing-room,” said Polly, fluttering the cloud busily, to measure another breadth.
“I’ll set that basket to rights when I come back, for I’ve messed it up dreadfully,” cried Alexia, flying off, to return with a pair which she brandished high. “Oh, dear me, Polly Pepper, will you ever in this world get through with all you’ve on your hands, I wonder! How many Dunraven youngsters are coming?”
“Twenty,” said Polly, her head on one side, calculating; “that is, Mrs. Henderson thinks that it is safe to plan to bring as many. And Susan is really to sing a Welcome-Home song, as they march around Phronsie and Roslyn.”
“Oh, how perfectly sweet!” breathed Alexia, already deep in the cutting-off process. “Dear me, how do you keep yours straight? Mine all skews up.”
“You better draw a thread, then,” advised Polly; “unless you can follow your eye.”