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 swear.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Well, you looked it.  But I admit my thoughts verged on the profane.  And I have such a cold in the head—­I can do nothing but sniffle, sigh and sneeze.  Isn’t that alliterative agony for you?  Queen Anne, do say something to cheer me up.”

“Remember that next Thursday night, you’ll be back in the land of Alec and Alonzo,” suggested Anne.

Phil shook her head dolefully.

“More alliteration.  No, I don’t want Alec and Alonzo when I have a cold in the head.  But what has happened you two?  Now that I look at you closely you seem all lighted up with an internal iridescence.  Why, you’re actually shining!  What’s up?”

“We are going to live in Patty’s Place next winter,” said Anne triumphantly.  “Live, mark you, not board!  We’ve rented it, and Stella Maynard is coming, and her aunt is going to keep house for us.”