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roses on Briggs Street glittered with diamonds of water; and the
rockery in the far corner showed a quiver of arbutus among its strange
and lacy ferns and mosses.
Laurel sniffed the fragrant air, filled with a tumult of energy; every
instinct longed to skip; she thought of jouncing as high as the poplars,
right over the house and into Washington Square beyond. "Miss
Fidget!" her grandfather exclaimed, exasperated, releasing her hand.
"You're like holding on to a stormy petrel."
"I don't think that's very nice," she replied.
"God bless me," he said, turning upon her his steady blue gaze; "what
have we got here, all dressed up to go ashore?" She sharply elevated a

shoulder and retorted, "Well, I'm eleven." His look, which had seemed
quite fierce, grew kindly again. "Eleven," he echoed with a satisfactory
amazement; "that will need some cumshaws and kisses." The first, she
knew, was a word of pleasant import, brought from the East, and meant
gifts; and, realizing that the second was unavoidably connected with it,
she philosophically held up her face. Lifting her over his expanse of
stomach he kissed her loudly. She didn't object, really, or rather she
wouldn't at all but for a strong odor of Manilla cheroots and the
Medford rum he took at stated periods.
After this they moved on, through the bay window of the drawing-room
that opened on the garden, where a woman was brushing with a
nodding feather duster, under the white arch that framed the main
stairway, and turned aside to where breakfast was being laid. Laurel
saw that her father was already seated at the table, intent upon the tall,
thickly printed sheet of the Salem Register. He paused to meet her
dutiful lips; then with a "Good morning, father," returned to his reading.
Camilla entered at Laurel's heels; and the latter, in a delight slightly
tempered by doubt, saw that she had been before her sister in a suitable
dress for such a warm day. Camilla still wore her dark merino; and she
gazed with mingled surprise and annoyance at Laurel's airy garb.
"Did mother say you might put that on?" she demanded. "Because if
she didn't I expect you will have to go right up from breakfast and
change. It isn't a dress at all for so early in the morning. Why, I believe
it's one of your very best." The look of critical disapproval suddenly
became doubly accusing.
"Laurel Ammidon, wherever are your pantalets?"
"I'm too big to have pantalets hanging down over my shoetops," she
replied defiantly, "and so I just hitched them up. You can still see the
frill." Janet had come into the room, and stood behind her. "Don't you
notice Camilla," she advised; "she's not really grown up." They turned
at the appearance of their mother. "Dear me, Camilla," the latter
observed, "you are getting too particular for any comfort. What has
upset you now?"

"Look at Laurel," Camilla replied; "that's all you need to do. You'd
think she went to dances instead of Sidsall"
Laurel painfully avoided her mother's comprehensive glance. "Very
beautiful," the elder said in a tone of palpable pleasure. Laurel
advanced her lower lip ever so slightly in the direction of Camilla. "But
you have taken a great deal into your own hands." She shifted
apparently to another topic. "There will be no lessons to-day for I have
to send Miss Gomes into Boston." At this announcement Laurel was
flooded with a joy that obviously belonged to her former, less dignified
state. "However," her mother continued addressing her, "since you have
dressed yourself like a lady I shall expect you to behave appropriately;
no soiled or torn skirts, and an hour at your piano scales instead of a
half."
Laurel's anticipation of pleasure ebbed as quickly as it had come--she
would have to move with the greatest caution all day, and spend a
whole hour at the piano. It was the room to which she objected rather
than the practicing; a depressing sort of place where she was careful not
to move anything out of the stiff and threatening order in which it
belonged. The chairdeacons in particular were severely watchful; but
that, now, she had determined to ignore.
She turned to johnnycakes, honey and milk, only half hearing, in her
preoccupation with the injustice that had overtaken her, the
conversation about the table. Her gaze strayed over the walls of the
breakfast room, where water color drawings of vessels, half models of
ships on teakwood or Spanish mahogany boards, filled every possible
space. Some her grandfather had sailed in as second and then first mate,
of others he had been master, and the rest, she knew, were owned by
Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone, her grandfather, father and
uncle.
Just opposite her was the Two