aid auntie, with a sly smile, "you go to the
cider-mill when you are put in charge of the children, and get run away
with by the oxen."

Eunice got very red.

"Well, that was a great while ago, auntie, when we were quite young,"
she said, with as much dignity as if the occurrence auntie referred to
was half a dozen years ago, instead of one. "Anyway," changing the
subject, "we'll look after everything now, and you can stay till the
last train, if you want to."

"No, dear, thank you. We'll come on the 5.10, I think, at any rate.
Perhaps earlier, if we accomplish all our business. There! I didn't put
on my watch. Edna, will you run up-stairs and get it, from my bureau or
table? I think I laid it on the table. No, wait. Have you yours, mother?
Never mind, then, Edna. But will you please put it back in my drawer,
when you go up-stairs, dear? Don't forget. Well, good-by. Be good
children," and with a kiss all round, auntie and grandma got into the
carriage.

"Good-by. Be sure and bring me some chocolate caramels," called Edna.

Auntie smiled, nodded, and waved her hand, and then Luke turned the
corner, and they rolled away.

"The boys said that the tide would be right for bathing, about eleven,"
Cricket said, after they had watched them out of sight. "Come on, it's
most time," and off they trooped for their plunge. The children were
already over at the Cove, with Eliza, running about in their little blue
bathing-suits, though they generally went in only ankle deep. Edna could
swim well, and Cricket had made good progress in the last week. Eunice
took to the water as naturally as a duck, and, strange to say, had
learned to swim well, before Cricket did.

After their bath they came back to the house, where Eunice and Cricket
settled themselves on the piazza, to write letters to the travellers.
Cricket kept a journal letter and scribbled industriously every day.
Both Eunice and Cricket had sometimes very homesick moments, when papa
and mamma seemed very far away, and Cricket, in particular, occasionally
conjured up very gloomy possibilities of her pining away, and dying of
homesickness, before they returned, so that when they should come home,
they would find only her grave, covered with flowers. She even went so
far, in one desperate moment, as to compose a fitting epitaph for her
tombstone, which was to be of white marble, of course, with an angel on
top.

This was the epitaph.

"Oh, stranger, pause! Beneath th