e than even your singing: just living at home in one place and having
your mother and the boys. I am always wishing and wishing, and telling
myself stories about living somewhere in the same house all the time,
with papa, and having a real home and taking care of him. You don't know
how good it would feel! Papa says the best we can do now is to make a
home wherever we are, for ourselves and others--but I think it is pretty
hard, sometimes."

"Well, I think the nicest thing would be to see the world, as you do,"
insisted Mary Beck. "I just _hate_ dusting and keeping things to rights,
and I never _shall_ learn to cook! I like to do fancy work pretty well.
You would think Tideshead was perfectly awful, in winter!"

"Why should it be?" asked Betty innocently. "Winter is house-time. I
save things to do in winter, and"--

"Oh, you are so preachy, you are so good-natured, you believe all the
prim things that grown people say!" exclaimed Becky. "What would you say
if you never went to Boston but once, and then had the toothache all the
time? You have been everywhere, and you think it's great fun to stay a
little while in poky old Tideshead, this one summer!"

"Why, it is because I have seen so many other places that I know just
how pleasant Tideshead is."

"Well, I want to see other places, too," maintained the dissatisfied
Becky.

"Papa says that we ourselves are the places we live in," said Betty, as
if it took a great deal of courage to tell Mary Beck so unwelcome a
truth. "I like to remember just what he says, for sometimes, when I
haven't understood at first, something will happen, may be a year after,
to make it flash right into my mind. Once I heard a girl say London was
stupid; just think! _London!_"

Mary Beck was rocking steadily, but Betty sat still, with her feet on
the window-seat and her hands clasped about her knees. She could look
down into the green yard below, and watch some birds that were
fluttering near by in the wet trees. The wind blew in very soft and
sweet after the rain.

"I used to think, when I was a little bit of a girl, that I would be a
missionary, but I should perfectly hate it now!" said Mary, with great
vehemence. "I just hate to go to Sunday-school and be asked the
questions; it makes me prickle all over. I always feel sorry when I wake
up and find it is Sunday morning. I suppose you think that's heathen and
horrid."

"I always have my Sunday lessons with papa; he reads to me, and g