“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, nor 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!”