The man looked very cross when she brought him out only brown bread and
two cold potatoes.

"Haven't you got nothin' better'n that?"

"It's as good as we have," answered Mrs. Pepper.

The man threw down the bread in the road. But Jocko thankfully ate his
share, Polly and Phronsie busily feeding him; and then he turned and
snapped up the portion his master had left in the dusty road.

Then they moved on, Mrs. Pepper and Polly going back to their work in
the kitchen. A little down the road the man struck up another tune.
Phronsie who had started merrily to tell "Baby" all about it, stopped a
minute to hear, and--she didn't go back to the orchard!

About two hours after, Polly said merrily:

"I'm going to call Phronsie in, mammy; she must be awfully tired and
hungry by this time."

She sang gayly on the way, "I'm coming, Phronsie, coming--why, where!--"
peeping under the tree.

"Baby" lay on its face disconsolately on the ground--and the orchard was
empty! Phronsie was gone!

"It's no use," said Ben, to the distracted household and such of the
neighbors as the news had brought hurriedly to the scene, "to look any
more around here--but somebody must go toward Hingham; he'd be likely to
go that way."

"No one could tell where he would go," cried Polly, wringing her hands.

"But he'd change, Ben, if he thought folks would think he'd gone there,"
said Mrs. Pepper.

"We must go all roads," said Ben, firmly; "one must take the stage to
Boxville, and I'll take Deacon Brown's wagon on the Hingham road, and
somebody else must go to Toad Hollow."

"I'll go in the stage," screamed Joel, who could scarcely see out of his
eyes, he had cried so; "I'll find--find her--I know.

"Be spry, then, Joe, and catch it at the corner!"

Everybody soon knew that little Phronsie Pepper had gone off with "a
cross organ man and an awful monkey!" and in the course of an hour
dozens of people were out on the hot, dusty roads in search.

"What's the matter?" asked a testy old gentleman in the stage, of Joel
who, in his anxiety to see both sides of the road at once, bobbed the
old gentleman in the face so often as the stage lurched, that at last he
knocked his hat over his eyes.

"My sister's gone off with a monkey," explained Joel, bobbing over to
the other side, as he thought he caught sight of something pink that
he felt sure must be Phronsie's apron. "Stop! stop! there she is!"
he roared, and the driver, who had his instructions a