"Fudge's done!" announced Happie triumphantly, giving a few last, furious beats to the mixture turning delightfully thick and sugary in the pan. "Bring on the pans, Polly, and, Bob, will you put it out on the fire escape till it gets cool enough to go on the ice without melting our entire stock? I've got to rest and cool my face."
Her lieutenants meekly obeyed, and Happie dropped on the chair which Bob vacated, fanning herself vigorously with a paper.
"I hope you haven't harmed your complexion, child," said Margery with her elder sisterly air, as she surveyed Happie's flaming cheeks.
"Fireproof!" Happie replied carelessly. "Sunproof and freckleproof too; you know I never burn or freckle as you do, Margery. That comes of having golden hair and peach blossom tints. I'm betwixt and between—coloring, age, height, cleverness, looks, everything, so I just slip through, and nothing touches me. I don't care! I like being fourteen and not having to think of skin or anything! I'd rather change places with Penny than with you, Peggy, but the worst of it is in three years I'll be as old as you are now."
"I like to feel that I am almost a young lady," said Margery placidly, surveying with entire satisfaction the hem of her dress resting on the floor as she leaned against the shelf. "I believe it is interesting to be grown-up. At least I ought to be of more use to motherkins then. And I should like to have a pretty house and entertain people beautifully, so they'd be perfectly happy visiting me." And pretty Margery sighed involuntarily, remembering the small flat which was her home, and which promised no gratification of her hospitable instincts.
"I shouldn't care for that," said Laura, taking up the theme with the readiness to discuss grown-up plans all little girls feel. "It doesn't mean much, just to entertain! What I should want would be to give people something better than dinners and visits. I mean to sing to people, my own songs, and play to them my own music and all the other composers'——"
"Why so modest, Laura? Why don't you say all the other great composers?" inquired Bob blandly, withdrawing his head from the window, having deposited the pans of fudge on the fire escape. "If it comes to swapping ambitions, mine is to go to college, and it looks as if I could go, now doesn't it? So Robert the Impatient, must make the best of it."
"And of himself," added Margaret with her gentle smile, and the half motherly look that made her grown-up air and elder sisterly manner very attractive.
"I'm going to have a hospital for hurt cats and dogs," announced Polly.
"I believe you will," laughed Happie. "I have so many dreams I couldn't possibly say which was my pet one, but I suppose I'll just amount to nothing, but keep house for all of you when you want to come home between doing great deeds."