or any day in particular? I think,
on the whole, I'd choose _not_ to get up. A chance to be lazy;
that's my vote, after all, Bel Bree!"

"O, dear!" cried Bel, despairingly. "Why don't some of you wish for
nice, cute little things?"

"Tell us what," said Kate. "I think we _have_ wished for all sorts,
amongst us."

"O, a real little _home_--to take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor
fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a
pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of
little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig
little kitchen; pies to make for Sundays and Thanksgivings; just
enough work to do in the mornings, and time in the afternoons to sit
and sew, and--somebody to read to you out loud in the evenings! I
think I'd do anything--that wasn't wicked--to come to live just like
that!"

"There isn't anybody that does live so nowadays," said Kate.
"There's nothing between horrid little stivey places, and a regular
scrub and squall and slop all the week round, and silk and snow and
ordering other folks about. You've got to be top or bottom; and if
it's all the same to you, I mean to be top if I can; even if"--

Kate was a great deal better than her pretences, after all. She did
not finish the bad sentence.

"I'll tell you what I do wonder at," said Bel Bree. "So many great,
beautiful homes in this city, and so few people to live in them. All
the rest crowded up, and crowded out. When I go round through Hero
Street, and Pilgrim Street, and past all the little crammy courts
and places, out into the big avenues where all the houses stand back
from each other with such a grand politeness, I want to say, Move up
a little, can't you? There's such small room for people in there,
behind!"

"Say it, why don't you? I'll tell you who'd listen. Washington,
sitting on his big bronze horse, pawing in the air at Commonwealth
Avenue!"

"Well--Washington _would_ listen, if he wasn't bronze. And its grand
for _everybody_ to look at him there. I shouldn't really want the
houses to move up, I suppose. It's good to have grandness somewhere,
or else nobody would have any place to stretch in. But there must be
some sort of moving up that could be, to make things evener, if we
only knew!"

Poor little Bel Bree, just dropped down out of New Hampshire! What a
problem the great city was already to her!

Miss Tonker put her sub-aristocratic face in at the door. It is a
c