think that would be a very good name. Are we
going to play with them?"

"After dinner we are, if Polly can find anything to make furniture of."

Polly's ingenuity did not fail her here, for, by the use of some match
ends, birch bark and a needle and thread she contrived all sorts of
things and then each girl hunted up a box for a house, so that these
new playthings proved to be very fascinating.

But at last the every-day commonplaces grew too dull for Polly, and she
suddenly exclaimed: "I'm tired of just visiting and talking about
measles and nurses and mustard plasters! I'm going to take the
Roseberry family down to the shore. They're going to have an
adventure."

"Oh, Polly, what? Can ours go, too?" cried Molly. "I would like to
have the Applebys meet an adventure, too."

"And I'd like Mr. and Mrs. Hips to have one," echoed Mary.

"Are they very wicked, black-hearted people?" asked Polly, darkly.

"Why--why----" Mary hesitated and looked to Molly for her cue.

"Do they have to be wicked to have an adventure?" asked Molly.

"If they join the Roseberries, they'll have to be, for the Roseberries
are wreckers and smugglers." Polly spoke impressively, and at this
flight of fancy Molly and Mary gazed at her admiringly. Yet they were
not quite willing that their families should give up their morals to
too great an extent.

"What do they have to do?" asked Mary, determined to find out the worst.

"Mine have a cave," said Polly, mysteriously. "It is on an island--I
know what island I am going to have--and there they hide their
treasures. They are counterfeiters, too," she added to their list of
crimes, "and they have chests of counterfeit money--sand dollars."

Molly laughed and Polly looked at her reproachfully. "It is as good as
any other counterfeit money," she remarked.

"Never mind the money. Go on, Polly." Molly was enjoying her cousin's
inventions.

"Well, they go out in a boat on stormy nights and when a vessel is in
distress, instead of helping, they don't do anything but just wait till
the vessel is wrecked and then they help themselves, to what they can
get. They have, oh, such a store of diamonds and rubies and precious
stones in their cave, and they have their own vessel that flies a black
flag."

"Then they're pirates," said Mary recoiling. "I don't want the Hips to
be pirates."

"They don't have to be," Polly calmly assured her. "They can be as
good as they want to, and can