to know if they couldn’t take the name off the gate during their occupation of it.
I told them roundly that the name went with the house. This has been Patty’s
Place ever since my brother Aaron left it to me in his will, and Patty’s Place it
shall remain until I die and Maria dies. After that happens the next possessor can
call it any fool name he likes,” concluded Miss Patty, much as she might have
said, “After that—the deluge.” “And now, wouldn’t you like to go over the
house and see it all before we consider the bargain made?”
Further exploration still further delighted the girls. Besides the big living-
room, there was a kitchen and a small bedroom downstairs. Upstairs were three
rooms, one large and two small. Anne took an especial fancy to one of the small
ones, looking out into the big pines, and hoped it would be hers. It was papered
in pale blue and had a little, old-timey toilet table with sconces for candles.
There was a diamond-paned window with a seat under the blue muslin frills that
would be a satisfying spot for studying or dreaming.
“It’s all so delicious that I know we are going to wake up and find it a fleeting
vision of the night,” said Priscilla as they went away.
“Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such stuff as dreams are made of,”
laughed Anne. “Can you fancy them ‘globe-trotting’—especially in those shawls
and caps?”
“I suppose they’ll take them off when they really begin to trot,” said Priscilla,
“but I know they’ll take their knitting with them everywhere. They simply
couldn’t be parted from it. They will walk about Westminster Abbey and knit, I
feel sure. Meanwhile, Anne, we shall be living in Patty’s Place—and on
Spofford Avenue. I feel like a millionairess even now.”
“I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy,” said Anne.
Phil Gordon crept into Thirty-eight, St. John’s, that night and flung herself on
Anne’s bed.
“Girls, dear, I’m tired to death. I feel like the man without a country—or was
it without a shadow? I forget which. Anyway, I’ve been packing up.”
“And I suppose you are worn out because you couldn’t decide which things to
pack first, or where to put them,” laughed Priscilla.
“E-zackly. And when I had got everything jammed in somehow, and my
landlady and her maid had both sat on it while I locked it, I discovered I had
packed a whole lot of things I wanted for Convocation at the very bottom. I had
to unlock the old thing and poke and dive into it for an hour before I fished out
what I wanted. I would get hold of something that felt like what I was looking
for, and I’d yank it up, and it would be something else. No, Anne, I did NOT