"Do come," said Ben, lighting up, for he was just feeling he
couldn't bear to look his last on the merry, honest face; "anybody'll
tell you where Mrs. Pepper lives."

"Is she a Pepper?" asked the boy, laughing, and pointing to the
unconscious little heap in the wagon; "and are you a Pepper?"

"Yes," said Ben, laughing too. "There are five of us besides
mother.

"Jolly! that's something like! Good-bye! Come on, Prince!" Then
away home to mother! Phronsie never woke up or turned over once
till she was put, a little pink sleepy heap, into her mother's arms.
Joel was there, crying bitterly at his forlorn search. The testy old
gentleman in the seat opposite had relented and ordered the coach
about and brought him home in an outburst of grief when all hope
was gone. And one after another they all had come back,
disheartened, to the distracted mother. Polly alone, clung to hope!

"Ben will bring her, mammy; I know God will let him," she
whispered.

But when Ben did bring her, Polly, for the second time in her life,
tumbled over with a gasp, into old Mrs. Bascom's lap.

Home and mother! Little Phronsie slept all that night straight
through. The neighbors came in softly, and with awestruck visages
stole into the bedroom to look at the child; and as they crept out
again, thoughts of their own little ones tugging at their hearts, the