style="font-size:15px;"> "Well, I'll lead off," began Joe with a flourish. "First, I'm going to be a sailor. I mean to ship with a captain bound for China; and hurra! we'll go out with a flowing sea or some other tip-top thing! Well, I guess we'll go to China, – this is all suppos'n, you know; and while I'm there I'll get such lots of things! – crape-shawls and silks for you, Flossy; and cedarwood chests to keep out moths, and fans and beautiful boxes, and a chest of tea, for Granny. On the way home we shall be wrecked. You'll hear the news, and think that I'm dead, sure enough."
"But how will Flo get her shawls?" asked Charlie.
"Oh, you'll hear presently! That's way in the end. I shall be wrecked on an island where there's a fierce native chief; and first he and his men think they'll kill me." Joe always delighted in harrowing up the feelings of his audience. "So I offer him the elegant shawls and some money" —
"But I thought you lost them all in the wreck!" interposed quick-brained Charlie.
"Oh, no! There's always something floats ashore, you must remember. Well, he concluded not to kill me, though they have a great festival dance in honor of their idols; and I only escape by promising to be his obedient slave. I find some others who have been cast on that desolate shore, and been treated in the same manner. The chief beats us, and makes us work, and treats us dreadfully. Then we mutiny, and have a great battle, for a good many of the natives join us. In the scrimmage the old fellow is killed; and there's a tremendous rejoicing, I can tell you, for they all hate him. We divide his treasure, and it's immense, and go to live in his palace. Well, no boat ever comes along; so we build one for ourselves, and row to the nearest port and tell them the chief is dead. They are very glad, for he was a cruel old fellow. Then we buy a ship, and go back for the rest of our treasures. We take a great many of the beautiful things out of the palace, and then we start for home, double-quick. It's been a good many years; and, when I come back, Granny is old, and walking with a cane, Florence married to a rich gentleman, and Dot here grown into a handsome girl. But won't I build a stunning house! There'll be a scattering out of this old shoe, I tell you."
"Oh, won't it be splendid!" exclaimed Charlie, with a long-drawn breath. "It's just like a story."
"Now, Hal, it's your turn."
Hal sighed softly, and squeezed Dot a little.
"I shall not go off and be a sailor" —
"Or a jolly young oysterman," said Joe, by way of assistance.
"No. What I'd like most of all" – and Hal made a long pause.
"Even if it's murder, we'll forgive you and love you," went on tormenting Joe.
"O Joe, don't!" besought Florence. "I want to hear what Hal will choose, for I know just what I'd like to have happen to me."
"So do I," announced Charlie confidently.
"I don't know that I can have it," said Hal slowly; "for it costs a good deal, though I might make a small beginning. It's raising lovely fruit and flowers, and having a great hot-house, with roses and lilies and dear white blossoms in the middle of the winter. I should love them so much! They always seem like little children to me, with God for their father, and we who take care of them for a stepmother; though stepmothers are not always good, and the poor wicked ones would be those who did not love flowers. Why, it would be like fairy-land, – a great long hot-house, with glass overhead, and all the air sweet with roses and heliotrope and mignonette. And it would be so soft and still in there, and so very, very beautiful! It seems to me as if heaven must be full of flowers."
"Could you sell 'em if you were poor?" asked Charlie, in a low voice.
"Not the flowers in heaven! Charlie, you're a heathen."
"I didn't mean that! Don't you suppose I know about heaven!" retorted Charlie warmly.
"Yes," admitted Joe with a laugh: "he could sell them, and make lots of money. And there are ever so many things: why, Mr. Green paid six cents apiece for some choice tomato-plants."
"When I'm a man, I think I'll do that. I mean to try next summer in my garden."
"May I tell now?" asked Charlie, who was near exploding with her secret.
"Yes. Great things," said Joe.
"I'm going to run away!" And Charlie gave her head an exultant toss, that, owing to the darkness, was lost to her audience.
Joe laughed to his utmost capacity, which was not small. The old garret fairly rang again.
Florence uttered a horrified exclamation; and Kit said, —
"I'll go with you!"
"Girls don't run away," remarked Hal gravely.
"But I mean to, and it'll be royal fun," was the confident reply.
"Where will you go? and will you beg from door to door?" asked Joe quizzically.
"No: I'm going out in the woods," was the undaunted rejoinder. "I mean to find a nice cave; and I'll bring in a lot of good dry leaves and some straw, and make a bed. Then I'll gather berries; and I know how to catch fish, and I can make a fire and fry them. I'll have a gay time going off to the river and rambling round, and there'll be no lessons to plague a body to death. It will be just splendid."
"Suppose a bear comes along and eats you up?" suggested Joe.
"As if there were any bears around here!" Charlie returned with immense disdain.
"Well, a snake, or a wild-cat!"
"I'm not afraid of snakes."
"But you'd want a little bread."
"Oh! I'd manage about that. I do mean to run away some time, just for fun."
"You'll be glad to run back again!"
"You see, now!" was the decisive reply.
"Florentina, it is your turn now. We have had age before beauty."
Florence tossed her soft curls, and went through with a few pretty airs.
"I shouldn't run away," she said slowly; "but I'd like to go, for all that. Sometimes, as I sit by the window sewing, and see an elegant carriage pass by, I think, what if there should be an old gentleman in it, who had lost his wife and all his children, and that one of his little girls looked like – like me? And if he should stop and ask me for a drink, I'd go to the well and draw a fresh, cool bucketful" —
"From the north side – that's the coldest," interrupted Joe.
"Hush, Joe! No one laughed at you!"
"Laugh! Why, I am sober as an owl."
"Then I'd give him a drink. I wish we could have some goblets: tumblers look so dreadfully old-fashioned. I mean to buy one, at least, some time. He would ask me about myself; and I'd tell him that we were all orphans, and had been very unfortunate, and that our grandmother was old" —
"'Four score and ten of us, poor old maids, —
Four score and ten of us,
Without a penny in our puss,
Poor old maids,'"
sang Joe pathetically, cutting short the purse on account of the rhyme.
