"Well, what would you, Romy?"

"A guitar with a blue ribbon, like my cousin Clara Cunningham's. She
puts the ribbon round her neck and sings, and it's just lovely."

"But you don't know how to play, do you?" inquired Molly.

"No, but afterwards I'd grind a big music-box, and just as I began to
play--no, to pretend to play--I'd set it off, and it would sound as if
I was playing."

"Pshaw, I'd grind something a great deal better than that," cried
Kitty. "I'd grind a real piano, and I'd learn to play on it my own
self. I wouldn't have any old make-believe music-boxes to play for
me."

"You never saw a guitar, I guess," rejoined Romaine, pouting, "or you
wouldn't think so."

"I'd grind a kitten," put in Rosy, "a white one, just like my
Snowdrop. Snowdrop has runned away. I don't know where she is."

"How funny she'd look, coming out of the coffee-mill, mewing and
purring," said Eyebright. "Now stop telling what you'd grind, and let
me go on. Hans had a neighbor, a very bad man, whose name was Carl.
When he saw how rich Hans was getting to be, he became very enverous."

"Very what?"

"Enverous. He didn't like it, you know."

"Don't you mean envious?" said Molly Prime.

"Yes, didn't I say so? Mother says I mispronounce awfully, and it's
because I read so much to myself. I meant enver--envious, of course.
Well,--Carl noticed that every day when people had gone home to their
dinners, Hans shut his door, and stayed alone for an hour, and didn't
let anybody come in. This made him suspect something. So one day he
bored a little round hole in the back door of Hans' house, and he sat
down and put his eye to it, and thought, 'Here I stay, if it is a
month, till I find out what that little rascal does when he is alone.'

"So he watched and watched, and for a long time he didn't see any
thing but Hans sewing away and waiting on his customers. But at last
the clock struck twelve, and then Hans shut his door and locked it
tight, and Carl said to himself, 'Ha, ha, now I have him!'

"Hans brought out the coffee-mill, and set it on the table, and Carl
heard him say, 'Little mill, grind roast veal, open sesame,' and a
nice piece of veal came out of the mill, and fell into a platter which
Hans held to catch it, and then Carl snapped his fingers and jumped
for joy, and ran off to the wharf, where there was a pirate ship whose
captain was a friend of his, and he said to the pirate captain, 'Our
fortunes are made.'

"'What do