e too much for Mrs. Pepper to do for the protector of little
Phronsie.

"I will!" cried Jasper, perfectly delighted. "You can't think how
awfully dull it is out in Hingham!"

"Don't you live there?" asked Polly, with a gasp, almost dropping a tin
full of little brown lumps of dough she was carrying to the oven.

"Live there!" cried Jasper; and then he burst out into a merry laugh.
"No, indeed! I hope not! Why, we're only spending the summer there,
father and I, in the hotel."

"Where's your mother?" asked Joel, squeezing in between Jasper and
his audience. And then they all felt instinctively that a very wrong
question had been asked.

"I haven't any mother," said the boy, in a low voice.

They all stood quite still for a moment; then Polly said, "I wish you'd
come out sometime; and you may bake--or anything else," she added; and
there was a kinder ring to her voice than ever.

No mother! Polly for her life, couldn't imagine how anybody could feel
without a mother, but the very words alone smote her heart; and there
was nothing she wouldn't have done to give pleasure to one who had done
so much for them.

"I wish you could see our mother," she said, gently. "Why, here she
comes now! oh, mamsie, dear," she cried. "Do, Joe, run and take her
bundle."

Mrs. Pepper stopped a minute to kiss Phronsie--her baby was dearer than
ever to her now. Then her eye fell on Jasper, who stood respectfully
waiting and watching her with great interest.

"Is this," she asked, taking it all in at the first glance--the boy with
the honest eyes as Ben had described him--and the big, black dog--"is
this the boy who saved my little girl?"

"Oh, ma'am," cried Jasper, "I didn't do much; 'twas Prince."

"I guess you never'll know how much you did do," said Mrs. Pepper. Then
looking with a long, keen gaze into the boy's eyes that met her own so
frankly and kindly: "I'll trust him," she said to herself; "a boy with
those eyes can't help but be good."

"Her eyes are just the same as Polly's," thought Jasper, "just such
laughing ones, only Polly's are brown," and he liked her on the spot.

And then, somehow, the hubbub ceased. Polly went on with her work, and
the others separated, and Mrs. Pepper and Jasper had a long talk. When
the mother's eyes fell on Phronsie playing around on the floor, she gave
the boy a grateful smile that he thought was beautiful.

"Well, I declare," said Jasper, at last, looking up at the old clock in
the cor