Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/194

 also. I forget some of the details; but there was a stern parent and an admirer, and a cup of cold poison, and now she says she wishes she were dying of consumption like poor Alphonsine. For all that, she looks quite fat and rosy, and I often see her in her best gown with a great deal of Roman scarf and mosaic jewelry, stationed in the doorway, "making the Pension look attractive to the passers-by." So she has a sense of duty, though she is unhappy.

"Amy has buried all her pebbles, and says she is tired of playing fairy. She is now sitting with her head on my shoulder, and professedly studying her French verb for to-morrow, but in reality, I am sorry to say, she is conversing with me about beheadings,—a subject which, since her visit to the Tower, has exercised a horrible fascination over her mind. "Do people die right away?" she asks. "Don't they feel one minute, and does n't it feel awfully?" There is a good deal of blood, she supposes, because there was so much straw laid about the block in the picture of Lady Jane Gray's execution, which enlivened our walls in Paris. On the whole, I am rather glad that a fat little white dog has come waddling down the beach and taken off her attention.

Speaking of Paris seems to renew the sense of fog which we had there. Oh, how enchanting