"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.
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