Part 40 (1/2)

”Oh! you come along,” cried Van, laying hold of his jacket. ”See here,”

dropping his voice cautiously, as he towed him successfully out, ”let's give Joe a chance to see a burglar; he wants to so terribly.”

”What do you mean?” asked Percy, with astonished eyes, his hands still in his pockets.

Van burst into a loud laugh, then stopped short. ”It'll take two of us,” he whispered.

”Oh, Van!” exclaimed Percy, and pulling his hands from their resting places, he clapped them smartly together.

”But we ought not, I really suppose,” he said at last, letting them fall to his sides. ”Mamma mightn't like it, you know.”

”She wouldn't mind,” said Van, yet he looked uneasy. ”It would be a great comfort to every one, to take Joe down. He does yarn so.”

”It's an old grudge with you,” said Percy pleasantly. ”You know he beat you when you were a little fellow, and he'd just come.”

”As if I cared for that,” cried Van in a dudgeon, ”that was nothing. I didn't half try; and he went at me like a country sledge-hammer.”

”Yes, I remember,” Percy nodded placidly, ”and you got all worsted and knocked into a heap. Everybody knew it.”

”Do you suppose I'd pound a visitor?” cried Van wrathfully, his cheeks aflame. ”Say, Percy Whitney?”

”No, I don't,” said Percy, ”not when 'twas Joe.”

”That's just it. He was Polly's brother.”

At mention of Polly, Percy's color rose, and he put out his hand. ”Beg pardon, Van,” he said. ”Here, shake, and make up. I forgot all about our promise,” he added penitently.

”I forgot it, too,” declared Van, quieting down, and thrusting out his brown palm to meet his brother's. ”Well, I don't care what you say if you'll only go halves in this lark,” he finished, brightening up.

”Well, I will,” said Percy, to make atonement.

”Come up to our room, then, and think it out,” cried Van gleefully, flying over the stairs three at a bound. ”Sh--s.h.!.+ and hurry up!”

Just then the door-bell gave a loud peal, and Jencks the butler opened it to receive a box about two feet long and one broad.

”For Miss Phronsie Pepper,” said the footman on the steps, holding it out, ”but it's not to be given to her till to-morrow.”

”All right,” said Jencks, taking it. ”That's the sixth box for Miss Phronsie that I've took in this morning,” he soliloquized, going down the hall and reading the address carefully. ”And all the same size.”

”Ding-a-ling,” Jencks laid the parcel quickly on one of the oaken chairs in the hall, and hurried to the door, to be met by another parcel for ”Miss Phronsie Pepper: not to be given to her till to-morrow.”

”And the i-dentical size,” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, squinting at it as he went back to pick up the first parcel, ”as like as two peas, they are.”

Upstairs Polly was at work with happy fingers, Alexia across the room, asking every third minute, ”Polly, how does it go? O dear! I can't do anything unless you look and see if it's right.”

And Polly would turn her back on a certain cloud of white muslin and floating lace, and flying off to Alexia to give the necessary criticism, with a pull here and a pat there, would set matters straight, presently running back to her own work again.

”You see,” she said, ”everything must be just right, for next to Mamsie's wedding, this is to be the most important occasion, Alexia Rhys, that we've ever known. We can't have anything too nice for Phronsie's getting-well party.”

”That's so,” said Alexia, twitching a pink satin bow on the handle of a flower-basket. ”O dear me! this bow looks like everything! I've tried six different times to make it hang down quite careless and refined.

And just to provoke me, it pokes up like a stiff old thing in my face.