"In that case, Mrs. Fisher,"--old Mr. King looked down the table-length to Mamsie,--"we must go too; for I don't intend to lose sight of these nice travelling companions until I am obliged to." Tom's face was one big smile. "Oh, goody!" exclaimed Polly, as if she were no older than Phronsie.
Jasper clapped Tom's back, instead of wasting words.
"So we will all proceed to pack up without more ado after breakfast. After all, it is wiser to make the move now, for we are getting so that we want to take root in each place."
"You just wait till you get to Zermatt," whispered Polly to Phronsie, who, under cover of the talk buzzing around the table, had confided to her that she didn't want to leave her beautiful mountain. "Grandpapa is going to take us up to the Gorner Grat, and there you can see another mountain,--oh, so near! he says it seems almost as if you could touch it. And it's all covered with snow, Phronsie, too!"
"Is it as big as my mountain here?" asked Phronsie.
"Yes, bigger, a thousand feet or more," answered Polly, glad that she had looked it up.
"Is it?" said Phronsie. "Every mountain is bigger, isn't it, Polly?"
"It seems to be," said Polly, with a little laugh.
"And has it a little white tent on the side, just like my mountain here?" asked Phronsie, holding Polly's arm as she turned off to catch the chatter of the others.
"Oh, I suppose so," answered Polly, carelessly. Then she looked up and caught Mamsie's eye, and turned back quickly. "At any rate, Phronsie, it's all peaked on the top--oh, almost as sharp as a needle--and it seems to stick right into the blue sky, and there are lots and lots of other mountains--oh, awfully high,--and the sun shines up there a good deal, and it's too perfectly lovely for anything, Phronsie Pepper."
"Then I want to go," decided Phronsie. "I do so want to see that white needle, Polly."
"Well, eat your breakfast," said Polly, "because you know we all have ever so much to do to-day to get off."
"Yes, I will," declared Phronsie, attacking her cold chicken and roll with great vigour.
"It seems as if the whole world were at Zermatt," said the parson, looking out from the big piazza crowded with the hotel people, out to the road in front, with every imaginable tourist passing and repassing. Donkeys were being driven up, either loaded down to their utmost with heavy bags and trunks, or else waiting to receive on their patient backs the heavier people. Phronsie never could see the poor animals, without such distress coming in her face that every one in the party considered it his or her bounden duty to comfort and reassure her. So this time it was Tom's turn to do so.