IX

A BOX FOR THE PEPPER BOYS


"Mamsie, have we been here a whole week in Amsterdam," cried Polly,
leaning out of the window to look up and down the canal where the
many-coloured boats lay, "beside all those days at Scheveningen? I can't
believe it!"

"It doesn't seem possible," Mother Fisher answered musingly, and her
hands dropped to her lap, where they lay quietly folded.

"Mamsie,"--Polly suddenly drew in her gaze from the charming old canal
and its boats, and sprang to Mrs. Fisher's side,--"do you know, I think
it was just the loveliest thing in all the world for Grandpapa to bring
dear Mr. and Mrs. Henderson abroad with us? I do, Mamsie."

"Mr. King is always doing good, kind things," said Mrs. Fisher, coming
out of her revery, as Polly threw herself down on the floor and laid
her head in her mother's lap, just as she used to do at home. "I
haven't done this for so long," she said, "and it is so good!"

"That is the only drawback about travel," observed Mother Fisher, her
hand passing soothingly over Polly's head, "that there never seems to
be time for the little home ways that are so good. Now we must make the
time and keep it, Polly."