“I don’t think, Mamsie,” she said quietly, “that people ought to be so very good who’ve never had a little brown house; never in all their lives.”

“Oh, yes, they had, child,” said Mrs. Pepper briskly; “places don’t make any difference.  It’s people’s duty to be good wherever they are.”

But Phronsie’s face expressed great incredulity.

“I’m always going to live here when I am a big, grown-up woman,” she declared, slowly gazing around the kitchen, “and I shall never, never go out of Badgertown.”

“Oh, Phronsie!” exclaimed Polly, turning around in dismay, “why, you couldn’t do that.  Just think, child, whatever in the world would Grandpapa do, or any of us, pray tell?”

“Grandpapa would come here,” declared Phronsie decidedly, and shaking her yellow head to enforce her statement.  “Of course Grandpapa would come here, Polly.  We couldn’t live without him.”

“That’s it,” said Polly, with a corresponding shake of her brown head, “of course we couldn’t live without Grandpapa; and just as ‘of course’ he couldn’t leave his own dear home.  He never would be happy, Phronsie, to do that.”

Phronsie took a step or two into the sunshine lying on the middle of the old kitchen floor.  “Then I’d rather not come, Polly,” she said.  But she sighed and Polly was just about saying, “We’ll run down now and then perhaps, Phronsie, as we have done now,” when the door was thrown open suddenly, and Joel burst in, his face as white as a sheet, and working fearfully.

“Oh, Polly! you must tell Mrs. Whitney—­I can’t.”

Polly sprang to her feet; Mrs. Pepper, who had just stepped into the pantry, was saying, “I think, Polly, I’ll make some apple dumplings, the boys like them so much.”

“What is it, Joe?” cried Polly hoarsely, and standing quite still.  Phronsie, with wide eyes, went up and took the boy’s cold hand, and gazed into his face as he leaned against the door.

“Dick!” groaned Joel; “oh! oh!  I can’t bear it,” and covering his face with one hand, he would have pulled the other from Phronsie’s warm little palm, but she held it fast.

“Tell me at once, Joe,” commanded Polly.  “Hush!—­mother”—­but Mrs. Pepper was already out of the pantry.

“Joel,” said Mrs. Pepper, “whatever it is, tell us immediately.”

The look in her black eyes forced him to gasp in one breath, “Dick fell off the double ripper, and both of his legs are broken—­may be not,” he added in a loud scream.

Phronsie still held the boy’s hand.  He was conscious of it, and that she uttered no word, and then he knew no more.

“Leave him to me, Polly,” said Mrs. Pepper, through drawn lips, “and then do you run as you have never run before, to the parsonage.  Oh! if they should bring him there before the mother hears.”

Phronsie dropped the hand she held, and running on unsteady little feet into the bedroom, came back with Polly’s hood and coat.