"Girls! What would you do most for in this world? What would you have for your choice, if you could get it?"
"Stories to read, and theatre tickets every night," said Grace Toppings.
"Something decent to eat, as often as I was hungry," said Matilda Meane, speaking thick through a big mouthful of cream-cake.
"To be married to Lord Mortimer, and go and live in an Abbey," said Mary Pinfall, who sat on a box with a cracker in one hand, and the third volume of her old novel in the other.
The girls shouted.
"That means you'd like a real good husband,—a Tom, or a Dick, or a Harry," said Kate Sencerbox. "Lord Mortimers don't grow in this country. We must take the kind that do. And so we will, every one of us, when we can get 'em. Only I hope mine will keep a store of his own, and have a house up in Chester Park!"
"If I can ever see the time that I can have dresses made for me, instead of working my head and feet off making them for other people, I don't care where my house is!" said Elise Mokey.
"Or your husband either, I suppose," said Kate, sharply.
"Wouldn't I just like to walk in here some day, and order old Tonker round?" said Elise, disregarding. "I only hope she'll hold out till I can! Won't I have a black silk suit as thick as a board, with fifteen yards in the kilting? And a violet-gray, with a yard of train and Yak-flounces!"
"That isn't my sort," said Kate Sencerbox, emphatically. "It's played out, for me. People talk about our being in the way of temptation, always seeing what we can't have. It isn't that would ever tempt me; I'm sick of it. I know all the breadth-seams, and the gores, and the gathers, and the travelling round and round with the hems and trimmings and bindings and flouncings. If I could get out of it, and never hear of it again, and be in a place of my own, with my time to myself! Wouldn't I like to get up in the morning and choose what I would do?—when it wasn't Fast Day, nor Fourth of July, nor Washington's Birthday, nor any day in particular? I think, on the whole, I'd choose not to get up. A chance to be lazy; that's my vote, after all, Bel Bree!"