“Hazel,” said Desire, suddenly,—­(she did her thinking deeply and slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with the needle,—­“Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread as quick as you can,")—­“Hazel!  I think I may go to Europe after all.”

“Desire!”

“And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me.”

“Desire Ledwith!”

“Yes, those are my names.  I haven’t any more; so your surprise can’t expend itself any further in that direction.  Now, listen.  It’s all to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks.  See?”

“O!”

“Very well; begin on interjections; they’ll last some time.  What I mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last spring at the Schermans’.  She says she always travelled so much on paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings; you can get all sorts of splendid things into it.  There are books, and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes.  Friends’ letters and art galleries.  I took it right up into my mind, silently, for my class, sometime.  And pretty soon, I think we’ll go.”

“O, Desire, how nice!”

“That’s it!  One new word, or two, every time, and repeat.  ’Now say the five?’ as Fay’s Geography used to tell us.”

“O, Desire Ledwith, how nice!”

“Good girl.  Now, don’t you think that Mrs. Geoffrey and Miss Kirkbright would lend us pictures and things?”

“How little we seem to have seen of the Geoffreys lately!  I mean, all this spring, even before they went down to Beverly,” said Hazel, flying off from the subject in hand at the mention of their names.  “I wonder why it is fixed so, Des’, that the best people—­those you want to get nearest to—­are so busy being the best that you don’t get much chance?”

“Perhaps the chance is laid up,” said Desire, thoughtfully.  “I think a good many things are.  But to keep on, Hazel, about my plan.  You know those two beautiful girls who came in Sunday before last, and joined Miss Kirkbright’s class?  Not beautiful, I don’t mean exactly,—­though one of them was that, too; but real”—­

“Splendid!” filled out Hazel.  “Real ready-made sort of girls.  As if they’d had chapel all their lives, somehow.  Not like first-Sunday girls at all.”

“One of them was a chapel girl.  Miss Kirkbright told me.  She grew up there till she was sixteen years old; then she went to live in the country.  Now I must have those two in, you see.  I don’t know but Mr. Vireo would say it was making a feast for friends and neighbors, if I pick out the ready-made.  But this sort of thing—­you must have some reliance, you know; then there’s something for the rest to come to, and grow to.  I think I shall begin about it before vacation, while they’re all together and alive to things.  It takes so long to warm up to the same point after the break.  We might have one meeting, just to organize, and make it a settled thing.  O, how good it will be when Mr. Vireo comes home!”