"I sha'n't be," said Polly, "if you won't cry any more, Phronsie."
"I won't cry any more," declared Phronsie, wiping off the last tear trailing down her nose. "Then you will be all well, Polly?"
"Then I shall be all as well as ever," said Polly, kissing the wet little face.
When they got ready to begin on the letter again, it was nowhere to be found, and Tom had disappeared as well.
"He took it out," said Adela, for the first time finding her tongue. "I saw him while you were all talking."
While they were wondering over this and were plunged further yet in dismay, Tom came dancing in, waving the unlucky sheet of the Round Robin over his head. "My mother says," he announced in triumph, "that father will get no end of fun over that if you let it go. It will cheer him up."
So that ended the matter, although Polly, who dearly loved to be elegant, had many a twinge whenever her eye fell on the letter at which Phronsie was now labouring afresh.
"We must put in little pictures," said Polly, trying to make herself cheery as the work went busily on.
"Polly, you always do think of the best things!" exclaimed Jasper, beaming at her, which made her try harder than ever to smile. "I wouldn't feel so badly, Polly," he managed to whisper, when Phronsie was absorbed with her work; "he'll like it probably just as father did the gingerbread boy."
"Pictures!" Tom Selwyn was saying, "oh, there's where I can come in fine with assistance. I'm no good in a letter." And again he rushed from the room.
"That's three times that boy has gone out," announced Adela, "and he joggles the table awfully when he starts. And he made me cut clear into that edge. See, Polly." She was trimming the third strip of paper, for the Round Robin was to be pasted together and rolled up when it was all done.
"He seems to accomplish something every time he goes," observed Jasper, drily. "Halloo, just look at him now!"
In came Tom with a rush, and turned a small box he held in his hand upside down on the table.
"O dear me!" exclaimed Adela, as her scissors slipped, "now you've joggled the table again!" Then she caught Polly's eye. "Aren't those pictures pretty?" she burst out awkwardly.
"Aren't they so!" cried Tom, in satisfaction, while Polly oh-ed and ah-ed, and Phronsie dropped her pen suddenly making a second blot; only as good fortune would have it, it was so near the edge that they all on anxious examination decided to trim the paper down, and thus get rid of it.