“Oh! did you have a stone table in your Orchard?” asked Van.
“Yes; I’ve seen it ever so many times,” said Jasper. Then he pulled himself up laughing, “Beg pardon, Polly.”
“Ho! ho! You’re talking,” cried Van at him.
“Can’t help it,” said Jasper recklessly, “when you begin to ask about the good times in The Little Brown House, I must talk.”
“You see,” said Polly to the Whitney boys, “we had to have a table for our tea-parties and ever so many other things, and so Ben chose a big stone in a field; it was Deacon Brown’s meadow, and he”—
“You said it was a field, Polly Pepper,” interrupted Percy in his most literal way.
“Well, it was just about the same thing,” said Polly, laughing.
“Never mind him, Polly,” said Jasper; and “You never will get this story if you keep stopping her all the time,” from Ben. So Polly hurried on. “And Deacon Brown was just as glad as he could be, of course, to have that big stone carried off from his meadow.”
“Why?” asked Van. “I should think all the Brown children would have wanted it to play on.”