Gwendolyn suddenly looked very earnest.
"Most in the whole world?" she asked.
"Yes, what?" Jane dropped the small package and shook the large one.
"In the whole, whole big world?" went on Gwendolyn—to herself rather than to her nurse. She was not looking at the table, but toward a curtained window, and the gray eyes had a tender faraway expression. There was a faint conventional pattern in the brocade of the heavy hangings. It suggested trees with graceful down-growing boughs. She clasped her hands. "I want to live out in the woods," she said, "at Johnnie Blake's cottage by the stream that's got fish in it."
Jane set the big package down with a thump. "That's awful selfish of you," she declared warmly. "For you know right well that Thomas and I wouldn't like to leave the city and live away out in the country. Would we, Thomas?"—for he had just entered.
"Cer-tain-ly not," said Thomas.
"And it'd give poor Miss Royle the neuralgia," (Jane and Miss Royle might contend with each other; they made common cause against her.)
"But none of you'd have to" assured Gwendolyn. "When I was at Johnnie Blake's that once, just Potter went, and Rosa, and Cook. And Rosa buttoned my dresses and gave me my bath, and—"
"So Rosa'll do just as well as me," interrupted Jane, jealously.
"—And Potter passed the dishes at table," resumed Gwendolyn, ignoring the remark; "and he never hurried the best-tasting ones."