What Two Children Did | Page 4

short, straight hair watching the proceedings with much interest, her hands clasped behind her back.
"My name is Nan," said the visitor as soon as she caught Elizabeth's eye, "Who are you? Is this your house? We've just come, and mother is in bed with a headache, and father's gone to church, so I'm roaming around seeking something to devour--"
"Does that mean eat?" said Elizabeth, a scene in one of her picture books of lions devouring their prey coming into her mind.
"I think it's what my father calls a figure of speech. He's a minister--a clergyman, you know. We've come down here to board, and he's going to have the services in the Chapel of the Heavenly Rest. Mother's sick about always, so I have to roam around--Say, I know a game; let's baptize your children."
"They don't need it; they're not born in sin--"
"Everything is," emphatically. "Don't try to teach a minister's child things, for pity's sake. I'll do the baptizing. Come along."
The rainwater barrel, half sunken in the ground, was at one of the rear corners of the house.
"We are not allowed to play in that, I think," said Elizabeth uneasily.
"That doesn't mean me, I'm older'n you. Here, give me the doll without a wig."
Down went the beloved "bawheady" with a thud that carried desolation to Beth's tender heart. Four others followed in quick succession before Beth could protest. Then clinging to Arabella, she started to run. Nan tried to run after her, but caught her foot on the barrel's brim and straightway joined the five dolls. Elizabeth opened her mouth to shriek, when in an opportune moment, a young man appeared on the scene, and speedily fished out Miss Nan, who dripped and coughed and choked; inarticulate, but evidently wrathy sounds wrestled for utterance in her throat. At last she shook herself free.
"I'm perfectly degusted with this whole preformance," she said as she went stalking off, dripping as she went.
Then the young man laughed and laughed, until he became aware of Elizabeth wistfully staring at him.
"What is it?" he asked.
"My dolls. They're baptized clear to the bottom; please get 'em out."
"I'll do it, if you will take this note to Miss Dorothy Stevens," said the young man, at once throwing off his coat and pushing up his shirt sleeve. Beth, before she trotted off, saw that he had a blue anchor on his arm. When she came back, the rescued five lay stretched on the grass in a pathetic row, and she at once ran to her prostrate children.
"You are to go to the parlor and tell Miss Dorothy all about it," she said, in passing, to their rescuer. "Your note made Miss Dorothy cry; and she was all white 'round her mouth. Thank you for the dolls," she called as an afterthought.
So busy was she drying her afflicted family that it was some time after the others had reached home that 'Vada, wildly excited, came to find Elizabeth and to tell her that Miss Dorothy's sweetheart had come back.
"From Paradise?" queried Beth, getting up at once and bristling all over with questions she wanted to ask him about that interesting place.
"Mighty nigh," said 'Vada, rolling her eyes. "He was shipwrecked on the raging main, and hit on de head wid somefin that done knock all de sense out of him, so he's pick up by some folks dat didn't know 'im, an' he went cruisin' aroun', till he come to, and, by 'me by, back to see his sweetheart."
Elizabeth went into the parlor later on, and stared so insistently at the young captain that her mother drew her gently to one side and whispered to her.
"But I'm anxious to see a sweetheart that has been in Paradise, mother," she explained.

CHAPTER IV The Wedding
Bells ring, Birds sing, Every one is gay; Hearts beat, Chimes sweet, On a bridal day.
It was one of the things for the children to remember always, that Miss Dorothy was married while they were there to help.
They helped so much in the matter of scraping all the cake and icing pans, stoning, and especially eating, raisins, that it was a wonder they were not ill.
The morning on which the wedding was to take place dawned as bright and golden as could be desired.
It was a very simple, pretty wedding in the stone chapel, towards which, in the early morning, the bridal party walked. Nan, Ethelwyn, and Elizabeth went ahead, bearing flowers, and after them came Miss Dorothy in her white gown, clinging to the arm of her sailor lover.
Mrs. Stevens and the children's mother, together with a few friends, awaited them in the pretty church, and Nan's father married them. They then all went to the bride's home for breakfast, immediately after which, the young couple were going away for a year. This fact, and