"Why—why no," stammered Ann. "I'm afraid I haven't any favorite.
You see—"
"So much the better. Then you can take Elizabeth without being untrue to any one else. She loved Florence. You know she's buried there. I think you used to make pilgrimages to her tomb."
Again Ann turned back, and at what she saw smiled a little, half bitterly, half wistfully. "I'd like to have made pilgrimages somewhere."
"To be sure you would. That's why you did. The things we would like to have done, and would have done if we could, are lots more part of us than just the things we did do because we had to do them. Just consider that all those things you'd like to have done are things you did. It will make you feel at home with yourself. And to-morrow we'll go over the river and order Elizabeth Barrett Browning and a tailored suit."
But with that the girl who would like to have done things receded, leaving baldly exposed the girl who had done the things she had had to do. "No," said Ann stubbornly and sullenly.
"But blue gingham morning dress and rose-colored evening dress are scarcely sufficient unto one's needs," murmured Kate.
Ann turned away her head. "I can't take things—not things like that."
"But why not?" pursued Kate. "Why can't you take as well as I can take?"
She turned upon her hotly, as if resentful of being toyed with. "How silly! It is yours."
Katie had said it at random, but once expressed it interested her.
"Why I don't know whether it is or not," she said, suddenly more
interested in the idea itself than in its effect upon Ann. "Why is it?
I didn't earn it."