“Oh, good! good!” cried Polly, delighted at the safe withdrawal from the precipice of dangerous argument.  “Alexia, now you must help us think up something to celebrate her coming downstairs.”

“Not so fast, Polly.”  The little doctor beamed at her in a way surprising to see after the morning’s affair.  “Phronsie won’t be ready for any celebration before next week.  Then I think you may venture.”

Alexia pouted and played with her spoon.

“O dear!” cried Dick dolefully, “what’s the reason we must wait a whole week, pray tell?”

“Because Father Fisher says so,” replied Ben across the table; “that’s the principal reason—­and it doesn’t need any more to support it”—­

“Well, I tell you,” broke in Polly in her brightest way, “let us think up perfectly splendid things.  It’s best as it is, for it will take us a week to get ready.”

“I shall get her a new doll,” declared Mr. King.  The rest shouted.  “Her others must be quite worn out.”

“What could you get her,” cried Mr. Whitney, “in the way of a doll?  Do tell us, for I really do not see.”

“Why, one of those phonograph dolls, to be sure,” cried Mr. King promptly.

“Are they on sale yet?” asked Jasper.  “I thought they had not perfected them enough for the market.”

“I think I know where one can be bought,” said his father.  “They must be perfected—­it’s all nonsense that I can’t find one if Phronsie wants it!  Yes, she shall have a phonograph doll.”

“That will be perfectly elegant,” exclaimed Polly, with sparkling eyes.  “Won’t Phronsie be delighted when she hears it talk?”

“She ought to have a Punch and Judy show,” said Mrs. Whitney, “she’s always so pleased with them, father.”

Mr. King pushed away his coffee-cup, and pulled out his note-book.

“‘Punch and Judy,’ down that goes,” he said, noting it after “phonograph doll.”  “What else?”

“Can’t we have some of those boys up from the Orphan Asylum?” asked Polly, after a minute in which everybody had done a bit of hard thinking.  “Phronsie loves to hear them sing when she goes there.  Oh! they are so cunning.”

“She’ll want to give them her best toys and load them down with all her possessions.  You see if she doesn’t,” warned Jasper.

“Well, she won’t give away her new doll, anyway,” cried Polly.

“No, she never gives away one of the dolls you’ve given her, father,” said Mrs. Whitney slowly, “not a single one.  I tried her one day, asking her to give me one to bestow on a poor child, and she quite reproached me by the look in her brown eyes.  I haven’t asked her since.”

“What did she say?” asked Mr. King abruptly.

“‘I can’t, Auntie; dear Grandpapa gave them to me himself.’  Then she ran for her savings bank, and poured out the money in my lap.  ’Let’s go out and buy the poor child a doll,’ she begged, and I really had to do it.  And there must be at least two hundred dolls in this house.”