"Oh, Mary, you do discourage me sometimes! Well, where was I?"
"You had got as far as her name," said Mary.
"Oh, yes. Well, and her father is rich. I should think he must be enormously rich. And she must be beautiful,—I am quite sure she must; and—she dresses splendidly, Annie says; and—and they are coming to live at the hotel; and she is fifteen—I told you that? And—well, I suppose that is all I really know just yet, Mary; but I feel a great, great deal more. I feel, somehow, that this is a very serious event in my life, Mary. You know how I have been longing for something exciting to happen. Only yesterday, don't you remember, I was saying that I didn't believe anything would ever happen, now that we had finished 'Ivanhoe'; and now just see!"
"I should think they would try to get a house, if they are well off," said practical Mary. "It must be horrid, living at a hotel."
"Oh, Mary, you have no imagination! I think it would be perfectly delightful to stay at a hotel. I've always just longed to; it has been one of my dreams that some day we might give up housekeeping and live at the hotel; but of course we never shall."
"For pity's sake! I should hope not, Sue, with a good home of your own! Why, what would there be to like about it?"
"Oh, it would be so exciting! People coming and going all the time, and bells ringing, and looking-glasses everywhere, and—and never knowing what one is going to have for dinner, and all kinds of good things in little covered dishes, just like 'Little Kid Milk, table appear!' Don't you remember? And—it would be so exciting! You know I love excitement, Mary, and I just hate to know what I am going to have for dinner."
"I know I am going to have peas for dinner," said Mary,—"at least, I want them. Sue, you haven't shelled a dozen peas; I shall have to go and get Bridget to help me."
"Oh, no; I will, I truly will!" cried Sue; and she shelled with ardor for a few minutes, the pods flying open and the peas rattling merrily into the tin basin.
"Do you remember the three peas in the Andersen story?" she said presently. "I always used to wish I had been one of those—the one that grew up, you know, and made a little garden for the sick girl. Wouldn't it be lovely, Mary, to come up out of the ground, and find you could grow, and put out leaves, and then have flowers? Only, I would be sweet peas,—not this kind,—and look so lovely, just like sunset wings, and smell sweet for sick people, and—Mary! Mary Hart! who is that?"