“What shall we do now?” asked Clover, while little Phil tipped the baskets upside down, as if to make sure there was nothing left that could possibly be eaten.

“I don’t know,” replied Katy, dreamily. She had left her seat, and was half-sitting, half-lying on the low, crooked bough of a butternut tree, which hung almost over the children’s heads.

“Let’s play we’re grown up,” said Cecy, “and tell what we mean to do.”

“Well,” said Clover, “you begin. What do you mean to do?”

“I mean to have a black silk dress, and pink roses in my bonnet, and a white muslin long-shawl,” said Cecy; “and I mean to look exactly like Minerva Clark! I shall be very good, too; as good as Mrs. Bedell, only a great deal prettier. All the young gentlemen will want me to go and ride, but I shan’t notice them at all, because you know I shall always be teaching in Sunday-school, and visiting the poor. And some day, when I am bending over an old woman and feeding her with currant jelly, a poet will come along and see me, and he’ll go home and write a poem about me,” concluded Cecy, triumphantly.

“Pooh!” said Clover. “I don’t think that would be nice at all. I’m going to be a beautiful lady—the most beautiful lady in the world! And I’m going to live in a yellow castle, with yellow pillars to the portico, and a square thing on top, like Mr. Sawyer’s. My children are going to have a play-house up there. There’s going to be a spy-glass in the window, to look out of. I shall wear gold dresses and silver dresses every day, and diamond rings, and have white satin aprons to tie on when I’m dusting, or doing anything dirty. In the middle of my back-yard there will be a pond-full of Lubin’s Extracts, and whenever I want any I shall go just out and dip a bottle in. And I shan’t teach in Sunday schools, like Cecy, because I don’t want to; but every Sunday I’ll go and stand by the gate, and when her scholars go by on their way home, I’ll put Lubin’s Extracts on their handkerchiefs.”