"I'm glad the girls over here have fun," said Polly, as Grandpapa and his party moved off. "Isn't it nice to think they do?"
"It isn't much matter where you live, there's a good deal to be gotten out of life; if you only know how," said the parson, thinking busily of the little brown house.
Two or three days of rest at Martigny put everybody in good shape, and gave them all a bit of time to pick up on many little things that were behindhand. Tom looked over all his floral treasures, with their last additions made at the Riffelalp, and discarded such as hadn't pressed well. And Jasper and Polly rushed up to date with their journals, and wrote letters home; and Adela worked up her studies and sketches.
Tom looked on silently when Polly and Jasper were scraping their pens in a lively fashion in the little writing room of the hotel. "That's my third letter, Polly," announced Jasper, on the other side of the table. "Now, I am going to begin on Joel's."
"One, two," said Polly, counting, "why, I thought I'd written three; well, this one is most finished, Jasper."
"Yes," said Jasper, glancing over at her, "is that your last page, Polly?"
"Yes," said Polly, hurrying away. Then she thought of what Mamsie had said, and slackened her speed.
Tom cleared his throat, and tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come nicely, so he burst out, "I say, I wish you'd write to my granddaddy, both of you," and then he stood quite still, and very red in the face.
Polly looked up quickly, her pen dropping from her fingers, and Jasper deserted his fourth letter and stared.
"Why," said Polly, finding her tongue, "we wouldn't dare, Tom Selwyn."
"Dare!" said Tom, delighted to think that no terrible result had really ensued from his words, that after they were out, had scared him mightily. "Oh, if you knew granddaddy!" And he sank into a chair by the table, and played with the heap of picture postal cards that Polly was going to address next.
"We might," said Polly, slowly, "write a letter, all of us. A kind of a Round Robin thing, you know, and send that."
"So we could," cried Jasper; "how would that do, Tom?"
"The very thing!" exclaimed Tom, striking his hand so heavily on the table, that for a minute it looked as if the ink-bottle hopped.