“Hush!” said Jasper, holding up his hand.
Percy was just going to say, “I should think you’d have gone to the woods, and dug up moss and flowers and cunning little roots.” But hearing Jasper’s “Hush!” he ducked involuntarily, very glad he hadn’t spoken.
“Oh! Phronsie wasn’t very well,” said Polly; “that is, she hadn’t been, and we knew Mamsie wouldn’t want her to walk so far. And besides, it was just as much fun to play in our Orchard. So we all decided to go there. Well, off we started”—
“Why, I thought you said it was just a little way back of the kitchen-door,” said Percy surprised out of himself.
“So it was,” answered Polly; “but we played it was ever so far off; and we walked around and around The Little Brown House, all but Phronsie, she sat on the back-steps till we were ready to go into the Orchard; then she got down, and we all went in together,” said Polly, with a grand flourish as if escorting her auditors into enchanted space, big beyond description. “Well, and don’t you think there was the greatest surprise when we got there!”
“Oh, tell us!” begged all the Whitney boys impatiently.
“Why, Ben had run off,—after we had talked over whether we would go to the woods or not, and we didn’t think we ought to, for Mamsie wouldn’t like to have Phronsie walk so far,—and he had brought back some flowers and some moss, and ever so many things.”
“That’s nice,” said Percy in a satisfied way.
“And there they were on the little stone table,” said Polly.