urred to
the subject during the hour's dinner-time.

They were grouped together--the same half dozen--in a little
ante-room, with a very dusty window looking down into an alley-way,
or across it rather, since unless they really leaned out from their
fifth story, the line of vision could not strike the base of the
opposite buildings, a room used for the manifold purposes of
clothes-hanging, hand-washing, brush and broom stowing, and
luncheon eating.

"Girls! What would you do most for in this world? What would you
have for your choice, if you could get it?"

"Stories to read, and theatre tickets every night," said Grace
Toppings.

"Something decent to eat, as often as I was hungry," said Matilda
Meane, speaking thick through a big mouthful of cream-cake.

"To be married to Lord Mortimer, and go and live in an Abbey," said
Mary Pinfall, who sat on a box with a cracker in one hand, and the
third volume of her old novel in the other.

The girls shouted.

"That means you'd like a real good husband,--a Tom, or a Dick, or a
Harry," said Kate Sencerbox. "Lord Mortimers don't grow in this
country. We must take the kind that do. And so we will, every one of
us, when we can get 'em. Only I hope mine will keep a store of his
own, and have a house up in Chester Park!"

"If I can ever see the time that I can have dresses made for me,
instead of working my head and feet off making them for other
people, I don't care where my house is!" said Elise Mokey.

"Or your husband either, I suppose," said Kate, sharply.

"Wouldn't I just like to walk in here some day, and order old Tonker
round?" said Elise, disregarding. "I only hope she'll hold out till
I can! Won't I have a black silk suit as thick as a board, with
fifteen yards in the kilting? And a violet-gray, with a yard of
train and Yak-flounces!"

"That isn't _my_ sort," said Kate Sencerbox, emphatically. "It's
played out, for me. People talk about our being in the way of
temptation, always seeing what we can't have. It isn't _that_ would
ever tempt me; I'm sick of it. I know all the breadth-seams, and the
gores, and the gathers, and the travelling round and round with the
hems and trimmings and bindings and flouncings. If I could get _out_
of it, and never hear of it again, and be in a place of my own, with
my time to myself! Wouldn't I like to get up in the morning and
_choose_ what I would do?--when it wasn't Fast Day, nor Fourth of
July, nor Washington's Birthday, n