Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/219

 end of the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for another story concerning Violet and Emma.

"Just a little tiny chapter, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did on New Year's Day or something. It's so dull to keep sailing and sailing all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told me anything about them, really and truly it is!"

Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the bane of Katy's existence. She had rung the changes on their uneventful adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of moisture had been squeezed. Amy was insatiable. Her interest in the tale never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she really could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turn the tables by asking, "Then, Miss Katy, may n't I tell you a chapter?" whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:—