“You may if you choose,” he answered with unmoved gravity.
“Tell her she can have a cup of coffee and anything else she wants if she will come,” added Grandma Elsie, with a look of amusement.
So Lulu called, “Polly, Polly, come here and you shall have a cup of the nicest coffee and anything else you want.”
Then for a minute or more everybody seemed to be looking and listening; but Polly neither answered nor showed herself, and at length baby Ned broke the silence with, “I ’spect Polly’s done ’way to our house adain. She won’t tum when Lu talls her.”
“She seems to have taken her departure very suddenly,” remarked Rosie. “Strange she should do so if she were really as hungry as she pretended.”
“I don’t b’lieve she was, Aunt Rosie,” said little Elsie, “for nobody ever gets starved at our house, ’cause papa always buys plenty for everybody to eat.”
“It’s good food too, and well cooked,” added Grace.
“I think that is all true, Mr. Croly, and I hope you will come and see for yourself,” laughed Violet.
“Hush, hush, hush! you talk too much, Polly,” came in a shrill scream apparently from the top of the tree; then in a coaxing, complaining tone, “Poor Polly’s hungry! It’s breakfast-time. Polly wants a biscuit. Polly wants a cup of coffee.”
“Why, she’s quite a talker. I’d really like to get a sight of her,” said Croly, making a more determined effort than before to do so.