[Little Dick plucked off the big bit of wet brown paper from his eye.]
“Very well,” said Polly once more; “I’ll put them back; that’s a good boy;” and she proceeded to do so, till Dicky was ornamented with the brown paper bits, all in the right places. “‘Now,’ says I, as Grandma Bascom used to say, ‘we’ll have the story.’ I’m going to tell you about ‘The China Mug.’”
“I’m glad of that,” said Jasper, “because that was one of the stories we had on a baking-day in The Little Brown House,—do you remember, Polly?”
“As if we could ever forget,” cried Polly happily. And thereupon ensued such a “Do you remember this?” and “Oh! you haven’t forgotten that in The Little Brown House!” that the Whitney children fell into despair, and began to implore that the story might begin at once.
“You’re always talking of the good times in The Little Brown House,” cried Van, who never could forgive Jasper for his good fortune in having been there.
“Can’t help it,” said Jasper, showing signs of rushing off again in reminiscence; so Polly hastened to say, “We really ought not to talk any more about it, but get on with the story. Well, you know, the China Mug was our China Mug, and it stood on the left corner of the shelf in the kitchen of The Little Brown House.”
“Is it a true story?” clamored Van.
“Oh, you mustn’t ask me!” cried Polly gayly, who wasn’t going to be called from the land of Fancy just then by any question.
“Don’t interrupt, any of you,” said Jasper, “or I’ll ask Polly not to tell about ‘The China Mug;’ you would better keep still, for it’s a fine story, I can tell you.”
So Van doubled himself up in a ball on the corner of the big sofa, and subsided into quiet, and Polly began once more.