because it would be nice to go and ride with the young gentlemen
_sometimes_. And I'd like to have a large house and a splendiferous
garden, and then you could all come and live with me, and we would play
in the garden, and Dorry should have turkey five times a day if he
liked. And we'd have a machine to darn the stockings, and another
machine to put the bureau drawers in order, and we'd never sew or knit
garters, or do anything we didn't want to. That's what I'd like to _be_.
But now I'll tell you what I mean to _do_"

"Isn't it the same thing?" asked Cecy.

"Oh, no!" replied Katy, "quite different; for you see I mean to _do_
something grand. I don't know what, yet; but when I'm grown up I shall
find out." (Poor Katy always said "when I'm grown up," forgetting how
very much she had grown already.) "Perhaps," she went on, "it will be
rowing out in boats, and saving peoples' lives, like that girl in the
book. Or perhaps I shall go and nurse in the hospital, like Miss
Nightingale. Or else I'll head a crusade and ride on a white horse, with
armor and a helmet on my head, and carry a sacred flag. Or if I don't do
that, I'll paint pictures, or sing, or scalp--sculp,--what is it? you
know--make figures in marble. Anyhow it shall be _something_. And when
Aunt Izzie sees it, and reads about me in the newspapers she will say,
'The dear child! I always knew she would turn out an ornament to the
family,' People very often say, afterward, that they 'always knew,'"
concluded Katy sagaciously.

"Oh, Katy! how beautiful it will be!" said Clover, clasping her hands.
Clover believed in Katy as she did in the Bible.

"I don't believe the newspapers would be so silly as to print things