is mossy stone
Lies a poor child, who died, forsaken and alone.
Her mother far in distant lands did roam,
Leaving her daughter, Jean, to die at home.
She pined away in sad and lonely grief,
Not any pleasures brought to her relief,
And when at last her family returned,
With sorrow great, about her death they learned.
So, pause, oh, stranger! drop a single tear,
Pity the grief of her who liest here."

This effusion was the greatest consolation to Cricket. She never showed
it to anybody, not even to Eunice, but she often took it out, and read
it with much satisfaction, and was almost inclined to begin pining away
directly.

But on the whole they were very contented, and it was much easier for
them than if they had been left at Kayuna.

Dinner-time--dinner was a one o'clock feast, in the summer--came when
they had finished their letters, and had them ready for the mail.

"We'll have the European letters to-night," said Eunice, joyfully, as
they sat down to the table. "Does it seem as if we'd been here two
weeks? Mamma won't seem so far away, when we get the first letters."

"There was the cablegram," said Edna.

"That doesn't count," said Eunice. "It wasn't mamma's own dear
handwriting."

"Papa writed it," chirped in Helen.

"No, he didn't, goosie," said Cricket. "The man here wrote it. Papa only
sent it."

"I know!" exclaimed Zaidee. "Papa talked it into the box, and the man
writed it down when he talked," confusing the telephone at home with the
cablegram, which, directed to Miss Eunice Ward, as the eldest
representative, had been the occasion of much excitement on its arrival.

After dinner the three girls started down on the beach, to sit down
under the rocks till it should be cool enough, later, to go for a ride
with the ponies.

"There comes the baby, all alone," said Cricket, presently, as that
young man slipped out of the yard all by himself, and ran across the
road and down towards the beach where the girls were. "Doesn't he look
cunning? The darling!"

Kenneth, although he was nearly four, was still The Baby to the family.
His broad-brimmed hat hung down his back, held around his chin by its
elastic, and his golden hair was rampant. His blue eyes were dancing
with mischief, and his hands were clasped behind his back.

"Dess what I dot?" he demanded, pausing at a safe distance, and looking
up roguishly from under his long lashes.

"What have you there, baby?