IX A SUDDEN BLOW
 "Mamsie," cried Polly, suddenly, and resting her hands on her knees as she sat on the floor before
the stove, "do you suppose there is any one poor enough in Badgertown to need the little brown
house when we lock it up to-morrow?" "Not a soul," replied Mrs. Pepper, quickly; "no more than
there was when we first locked it up five years ago, Polly. I've been all over that with the parson
last evening; and he says there isn't a new family in the place, and all the old ones have their
homes, the same as ever. So we can turn the key and leave it with a clear conscience."
Polly drew a long breath of delight, and gazed long at the face of the 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 perfectly¹ 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 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

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