“This knocks your pretty plan of gazing at the yellow house, sky-high, Alexia,” whispered Pickering, under cover of the noise.
“No, it doesn’t,” she retorted. “We’ll go afterward, when the children are abed. It’s moonlight, and we can see it just as well.”
“Think of choosing a house by moonlight!” laughed Pickering.
“Just as well as to choose it by sunlight, as long as we can see,” said Alexia, jingling the house-key they had secured from the agent on the way up. “Yes; we’ll have quite time before we take the train home.”
“Oh, you can’t go home to-night!” cried Polly and Jasper together. “The idea! with a party and house-hunting on your hands. Stay over, Alexia.”
“I must be in town at eight in the morning,” said Pickering, getting out of his chair to stretch his long legs and look at the hills. “Alexia can stay if she wants to.”
“As if I could or would, when my husband can’t,” she cried. “And there’s that blessed child left all alone!”
“But since he’s learned to converse,” said Pickering, “he can ask for his rations. So he’s not to be considered.”
“Well, I’m perfectly shocked!” declared Alexia. “And I shall go home with you in the late train.”
Oh, the candy frolic of that night! Everybody had such a glorious time that the little old kitchen rang with the jollity that flowed over, taking in all Primrose Lane, and down as far as “Grandma Bascom’s” little cottage. “Grandma” now had to lie abed with her rheumatism; but Polly and Jasper found time to slip away a bit in the midst of the festivities and carry her a little dish of the candy before the nuts were put in, for “Grandma” didn’t like nuts, and she did like molasses candy. And Polly carried a few other things in a small basket on her arm.