"A post-office!" cried Trix, jumping up in great excitement, her dark eyes snapping. "Margery, it's a great idea."
"Hurrah for Margery!" cried Jack.
"It's splendid. Oh, Margery, you are so clever!" cried Amy, scrambling up rapidly, to Tommy Traddles' great disgust.
"When you do think, Margery, you think," said Trix, pulling Margery out of her chair. "Come on," and holding Margery's slender little hands in her strong brown ones, she pranced around the room in a triumphal dance, followed by both the others, while Tommy Traddles retreated under the sofa, whence he peered out at the performance with dilated eyes.
He withdrew his head quickly as the four children fell breathless and laughing on the sofa to discuss and mature Margery's brilliant plan.
"What did you mean about names?" asked Jack. "You may write poetry, Margery, but you sometimes get mixed in talking prose."
"I mean this," began Margery. "Let's each take some character or name, and let's write to each other by these names instead of our own; it would be more fun. I'd like to be Mary Queen of Scots."
"Oh, I'll be Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert!" cried Jack, who in his twelfth year was beginning to taste the joy Sir Walter has to give an imaginative child, and revelled in constantly repeated reading of "Ivanhoe."
"I'll be Anthony Wayne, because I'd love to ride down the steps," said Trix enthusiastically; "or Lafayette, or Light Horse Harry, or Napoleon."
"O Trix, you can't be a man," expostulated Margery.