stove that seemed to crackle out an answering note of joy as the wood
snapped merrily; then she slowly looked around the kitchen.

"It's so perfectly lovely, Mamsie," she broke out at length, "to see the
dear old things, and to know that they are waiting here for us to come
back whenever we want to. And to think it isn't wicked not to have them
used, because everybody has all they need; oh! it's so delicious to
think they can be left to themselves."

She folded her hands now across her knees, and drew another long breath
of content.

Phronsie stole out of the bedroom, and came slowly up to her mother's
side, pausing a bit on the way to look into Polly's absorbed face.

"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