Five Little Peppers Abroad Part 18

"I know it," said Polly, pulling herself out of her gloom in an instant, to be as gay as ever, till the big sombre dining room seemed instinct with life, and the cheeriest place imaginable.

"What good times Americans do have!" exclaimed a lady, pa.s.sing the door, and sending an envious glance within.

"Yes, if they're the right kind of Americans," said her companion, wisely.

All that wonderful day the sun seemed to shine more brightly than on any other day in the whole long year. And the two girls who had the birthday together, went here and there, arm in arm, to gladden all the tired, and often discontented, eyes of the fellow-travellers they chanced to meet. And when finally it came to the dusk, and Polly and Adela were obliged to say, "Our birthday is almost all over," why then, that was just the very time when Mother Fisher and the little doctor (for he was in the plan, you may be very sure, only he wanted her to make all the arrangements, "It's more in a woman's way, my dear," he had said),--well, then, that was their turn to celebrate the double birthday!

"Where are those girls?" cried the little doctor, fidgeting about, and knocking down a little table in his prancing across the room. Jasper ran and picked it up. "No harm done," he declared, setting the books straight again.

"O dear, did I knock that over?" asked Dr. Fisher, whirling around to look at the result of his progress. "Bless me, did I really do that?"

"It's all right now," said Jasper, with a laugh at the doctor's face.

"Lucky there wasn't anything that could break on the table."

"I should say so," declared the little doctor; "still, I'm sorry I floored these," with a rueful hand on the books. "I'd rather smash some other things that I know of than to hurt the feelings of a book. Dear me!"

"So had I," agreed Jasper, "to tell you the truth; but these aren't hurt; not a bit." He took up each volume, and carefully examined the binding.

When he saw that this was so, the little doctor began to fidget again, and to wonder where the girls were, and in his impatience he was on the point of prancing off once more across the room, when Jasper said, "Let us go and find them--you and I."

"An excellent plan," said Dr. Fisher, hooking his arm into Jasper's and skipping off, Jasper having hard work to keep up with him.

"Here--where are you two going?" called Mr. King after them. And this hindered them so that Polly and Adela ran in unnoticed. And there they were on time after all; for it turned out that the little doctor's watch was five minutes ahead.

Well, and then they all filed into the big dining room, and there, to be sure, was their special table in the centre, and in the middle of it was a tall Dutch cake, ornamented with all sorts of nuts and fruits and candies, and gay with layers of frosting, edged and trimmed with coloured devices, and on the very tip-top of all was an elaborate figure in sugar of a little Dutch shepherdess. And around this wonderful cake were plates of mottoes, all trimmed in the Dutch fashion--in pink and green and yellow--while two big bunches of posies, lay one at each plate, of the two girls who had a birthday together in Old Amsterdam.

"Oh--oh!" cried Polly, seizing her bunch before she looked at the huge Dutch cake, and burying her nose deep among the big fragrant roses, "how perfectly lovely! Who did do this?"

But no one said a word. And the little doctor was as sober as a judge.

He only glared at them over his spectacles.

"Grandpapa," gasped Polly, "you did."

"Guess again," advised Grandpapa. "Mamsie--" Polly gave one radiant look at Mother Fisher's face.

Then Dr. Fisher broke out into a hearty laugh. "You've guessed it this time, Polly, my girl," he said, "your mother is the one."

"Your father really did it," corrected Mother Fisher. "Yes, Adoniram, you did,--only I saw to things a little, that's all."

"Which means that pretty much the whole business was hers," added the little doctor, possessing himself of her hand under cover of the table.

"Well, girls, if you like your birthday party fixings, that's all your mother and I ask. It's Dutch, anyway, and what you won't be likely to get at home; there's so much to be said for it."

XII

THE HENDERSON BOX

And as Mother Fisher observed, they would all enjoy Marken better for the delay, for there would be more time to antic.i.p.ate the pleasure; and then there was the Henderson box to get ready, for Grandpapa King had not only approved the plan; he had welcomed the idea most heartily. "It will be a good diversion from our scare," he said, when Polly and Jasper laid it before him.

"And give us all something to do," he added, "so go ahead, children, and set to work on it." And Polly and Jasper had flown off with the good news, and every one did "set to work" as Grandpapa said, diving into the shops again.

Phronsie tried to find the mate to her china cat, that was by this time sailing over the sea to Joel; and it worried her dreadfully, for, try as she would, she never could see another one. And she looked so pale and tired one night that Mr. King asked her, in consternation, as they were all a.s.sembled in one corner of the drawing-room, what was the matter.

"I wish I could find a cat," sighed Phronsie, trying not to be so tired, and wishing the p.r.i.c.kles wouldn't run up and down her legs so.

"We've walked and walked, Grandpapa, and the shop wouldn't come, where it must be."

"What kind of a cat is it you want?" asked Adela Gray.

"It was just like Joey's," said Phronsie, turning her troubled blue eyes on Adela's face.

"Well, what colour?" continued Adela.

"It was yellow," said Phronsie, "a sweet little yellow cat."

"With green eyes?"

"No, I don't think it's eyes were green," said Phronsie, slowly trying to think, "but they were so pretty; and she had a pink ribbon around her neck, and--"

"Oh, that settles it," declared Adela, quite joyful that she could help the little Pepper girl in any way, "at least the pink ribbon round its neck does, for I know where there is a cat exactly like that--that is, the one I saw had green eyes, but everything else is like it--it's sitting upon a shelf in a shop where I was just this very day, Phronsie Pepper."

"Oh!" Phronsie gave a little gurgle of delight, and, slipping out of her chair, she ran over to Adela. "Will you show me that shop to-morrow?" she begged, in great excitement.

"To be sure I will," promised Adela, just as happy as Phronsie; "we will go in the morning right after breakfast. May we, Mrs. Fisher?"

looking over to her, where she sat knitting as cosily as if she were in the library at home. "For I think people who travel, get out of their everyday habits," she had said to her husband, before they started, "and I'm going to pack my knitting basket to keep my hands out of mischief."

And old Mr. King had smiled more than once in satisfaction to glance over at Mother Fisher in her cosey corner of an evening, and it made him feel at home immediately, even in the dreariest of hotel parlours, just the very sight of those knitting needles.

And so, in between the picture galleries and museums, to which some part of every day was devoted, the Peppers and Jasper and Adela, and old Mr. King, who always went, and Mother Fisher, who sometimes was of the party, the ransacking of the lovely shops took place. And it really seemed as if everything that the Henderson boys could possibly want, was in some of those places--no matter how out-of-the-way--and waiting to be bought to fly over the sea to Badgertown. At last off that box went. Then Polly was quite happy, and could enjoy things all the more, with a mind at rest.

"Now we are all ready for Marken," she cried that night, after dinner, when the box was on its way to the steamer, "and I do hope we are going to-morrow." Jasper and she had a little table between them, and they were having a game of chess.

"Yes, we are, I think," said Jasper, slowly considering whether he would better bring down one of his knights into the thick of the battle, or leave it to protect his queen.

"Oh, how fine!" exclaimed Polly, unguardedly moving the p.a.w.n that held at bay a big white bishop, who immediately swooped down on her queen, and away it went off the board; and "oh, how perfectly dreadful!" all in one and the same breath.

"You may have it back," said Jasper, putting the black queen in place again.

"No, indeed--it's perfectly fair that I lost it," said Polly; "oh, I wouldn't take it back for anything. I was talking; it was all my own fault, Jasper."

"Well, you were talking about Marken, and I don't wonder, for we have been so long trying to go there. Do take it back, Polly," he begged, holding it out.

"No, indeed!" declared Polly again, shaking her brown head decidedly, "not for the world, Jasper."

"What is going over in that corner?" called Grandpapa's voice, by the big reading table. He had finished his newspaper, and was now ready to talk. So Jasper and Polly explained, and that brought out the subject of Marken, and old Mr. King said yes, it was perfectly true that he had made all the arrangements to go the following day if the weather were fine. So Polly and Jasper swept off the remaining pieces on the chessboard, and packed them away in their box, and ran over to hear all the rest of it that he was now telling to the family.

"So you see it didn't make any difference about that old queen anyway,"