t 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?"