A fortnight later,the boys were picking apples one golden October afternoon,and the girls were hurrying to finish their work,that they might go and help the harvesters.It was six weeks now Since the new school began,and they had learned to like it very much,though they found that it was not all play,by any means.But lessons,exercise,and various sorts of housework made an agreeable change,and they felt that they were learning things which would be useful to them all their lives.They had been making underclothes for themselves,and each had several neatly finished garments cut,fitted,and sewed by herself,and trimmed with the pretty tatting Jill made in such quantities while she lay on her sofa.
Now they were completing new dressing sacks,and had enjoyed this job very much,as each chose her own material,and suited her own taste in the making.Jill's was white,with tiny scarlet leaves all over it,trimmed with red braid and buttons so like checkerberries she was tempted to eat them.Molly's was gay,with bouquets of every sort of flower,scalloped all round,and adorned with six buttons,each of a different color,which she thought the last touch of elegance.Merry's,though the simplest,was the daintiest of the three,being pale blue,trimmed with delicate edging,and beautifully made.
Mrs.Minot had been reading from Miss Strickland's "Queens of England"while the girls worked,and an illustrated Sliakspeare lay open on the table,as well as several fine photographs of historical places for them to look at as they went along.The hour was over now,the teacher gone,and the pupils setting the last stitches as they talked over the lesson,which had interested them exceedingly.
"I really believe I have got Henry's six wives into my head right at last.Two Annes,three Katherines,and one Jane.Now I've seen where they lived and heard their stories,I quite feel as if I knew them,"said Merry,shaking the threads off her work before she folded it up to carry home.
"King Henry the Eighth to six spouses was wedded,One died,one survived,two divorced,two beheaded,'was all I knew about them before.Poor things,what a bad time they did have,"added Jill,patting down the red braid,which would pucker a bit at the corners.
"Katherine Parr had the best of it,because she outlived the old tyrant and so kept her head on,"said Molly,winding the thread round her last button,as if bound to fasten it on so firmly that nothing should decapitate that.
"I used to think I'd like to be a queen or a great lady,and wear velvet and jewels,and live in a palace,but now I don't care much for that sort of splendor.I like to make things pretty at home,and know that they all depend on me,and love me very much.Queens arc not happy,and I am,"said Merry,pausing to look at Anne Hathaway's cottage as she put up the picture,and to wonder if it was very pleasant to have a famous man for one's husband.
"I guess your missionarying has done you good;mine has,and I'm getting to have things my own way more and more every day.Miss Bat is so amiable,I hardly know her,and father tells her to ask Miss Molly when she goes 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 Iheard 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.
