to him for orders. Isn't that fun?" laughed Molly, in high
glee, at the agreeable change. "I like it ever so much, but I don't want
to stay so all my days. I mean to travel, and just as soon as I can
I shall take Boo and go all round the world, and see everything," she
added, waving her gay sack, as if it were the flag she was about to nail
to the masthead of her ship.

"Well, I should like to be famous in some way, and have people admire
me very much. I'd like to act, or dance, or sing, or be what I heard the
ladies at Pebbly Beach call a 'queen of society.' But I don't expect to
be anything, and I'm not going to worry I shall _not_ be a Lucinda, so
I ought to be contented and happy all my life," said Jill, who was very
ambitious in spite of the newly acquired meekness, which was all the
more becoming because her natural liveliness often broke out like
sunshine through a veil of light clouds.

If the three girls could have looked forward ten years they would have
been surprised to see how different a fate was theirs from the one each
had chosen, and how happy each was in the place she was called to fill.
Merry was not making the old farmhouse pretty, but living in Italy, with
a young sculptor for her husband, and beauty such as she never dreamed
of all about her. Molly was not travelling round the world, but
contentedly keeping house for her father and still watching over Boo,
who was becoming her pride and joy as well as care. Neither was Jill
a famous woman, but a very happy and useful one, with the two mothers
leaning on her as they grew old, the young men better for her influence
over them, many friends to love and honor her, and a charming home,
where she was queen by right of her cheery spirit, grateful heart, and
unfailing devotion to those who had made her what she was.

If any curious reader, not content with this peep into futurity,
asks, "Did Molly and Jill ever marry?" we must reply, for the sake
of peace--Molly remained a merry spinster all her days, one of the
independent, brave, and busy creatures of whom there is such need in the
world to help take care of other peoples' wives and children, and do the
many useful jobs that the married folk have no time for. Jill certainly
did wear a white veil on the day she was twenty-five and called her
husband Jack. Further than that we cannot go, except to say that
this leap did not end in a catastrophe, like the first one they took
together.

That day, however