“I’m afraid Erica will have to go lacking gold pieces and independence,” observed Mrs. Folger, sagely, “if her winning them depends on a needle and thimble.” “I wish you’d let me teach you,” Milly offered. “I’m just sure I could make anybody love sewing. It’s—why, it’s such _fun_ to see the thing you’re working on grow under your fingers!” But Erica, rather alarmed, shook her red curls hastily. “You never could, Milly, but thank you just the same,” she refused. “It always seems such a wicked waste of time to me,” she confessed, “to sit indoors and stick a silly little piece of steel in and out of cloth, when you could be outdoors, walking over the commons, and along the beach. There’s so much that’s interesting to keep watching wherever you go, outdoors. You know, I really _was_ meant to be a boy, Aunt Callie. There was some dreadful mistake made, somehow, about me.” She joined, rather ruefully, in the laugh that went up, but continued to nod her head in emphatic insistence. Yet the fact that Milly had thought far enough ahead to plan an independent future, improbable though its early realization might be, made a deep impression on Erica. She was far from being in sympathy with that particular ambition itself—”fancy planning to _sew on dresses_ all the rest of your born days, and _liking_ it!” she gasped in frank dismay to Lister. But she was slightly depressed that it had never occurred to her, also, to think of plans, of any kind, regarding that vague, far-off time when she herself should be “grown up.” She supposed, when she considered the subject, that she expected things to go on indefinitely, more or less as they did now. Of course she was hoping desperately, since Lis had brought back the jade-and-silver key, that her father would consent to take her to China on one of his voyages, at a not-too-distant date. But that, she realized now in a new discouragement of spirit, was not a real plan for the future, in the sense that Milly’s was. If she had been a boy, there’d have been no question at all. She would have followed the sea, as her father, and _his_ father, and any number of uncles and great-uncles had done. But when you were only a stay-at-home girl, who, unfortunately, hated the quiet, stay-at-home duties that were the only ones open to you— She sighed a deep, gusty little sigh, and decided that she would put the further consideration of the future off for a day when the early June sunshine was not so bright and beckoning, and the crisp sea wind did not sing so alluring an invitation beachward. Milly was up in the attic, sewing as usual, and keeping an eye on Barbee and her dolls, but Lis was always ready for a beach walk. So presently the two set out together along Orange Street to Main, and turned down the latter to the harbor.