ay-windows and wings and things, and then it
would be big enough."

"Would it hold the Tea Club?" said Patty. "I must have room for them,
you know."

"Oh, won't it be fun to have the Tea Club at Patty's house!" cried
Elsie. "I hadn't thought of that."

"What's a home without a Tea Club?" said Patty. "I shall select the house
with an eye single to the glory and comfort of you girls."

"Then I know of a lovely house," said Christine Converse. "It's awfully
big, and it's pretty old, but I guess it could be fixed up. I mean the
old Warner place."

"Good gracious!" cried Ethel; "'way out there! and it's nothing but a
tumble-down old barn, anyhow."

"Oh, I think it's lovely; and it's Colonial, or Revolutionary, or
something historic; and they're going to put the trolley out there this
spring,--my father said so."

"It is a nice old house," said Patty; "and it could be made awfully
pretty and quaint. I can see it, now, in my mind's eye, with dimity
curtains at the windows, and roses growing over the porch."

"I hope you will never see those dimity curtains anywhere but in your
mind's eye," said Marian. "It's a heathenish old place, and, anyway, it's
too far away from our house."

"Papa says I can have a pony and cart," said Patty; "and I could drive
over every day."

"A pony and cart!" exclaimed Helen Preston. "Won't that be perfectly
lovely! I've always wanted one of my own. And shall you have
man-servants, and maid-servants? Oh, Patty, you never could run a big
establishment like that. You'll have to have a housekeeper."

"I'm going to try it," said Patty, laughing. "It will be an
experiment, and, of course, I shall make lots of blunders at first; but
I think it's a pity if a girl nearly sixteen years old can't keep house
for her own father."

"So do I," said Laura. "And, anyhow, if you get into any dilemmas we'll
all come over and help you out."

The girls laughed at this; for Laura Russell was a giddy little
feather-head, and couldn't have kept house for ten minutes to save her
life.

"Much good it would do Patty to have the Tea Club help her keep house,"
said Florence Douglass. "But we'll all make her lovely things to go to
housekeeping with. I shall be real sensible, and make her sweeping-caps
and ironing-holders."

"Oh, I can beat that for sensibleness," cried Ethel Holmes. "I read about
it the other day, and it's a broom-bag. I haven't an idea what it's for;
but I'll find out, and I'll make one."