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 the
mother's sad face impaired the appetites of the guests, with three noble
exceptions. The trio at the end of the table ate with zest and
unimpaired enthusiasm, of the good things that they fondly believed
might never have reached their present point of perfection had it not
been for their skill.

"Should you think," Elizabeth paused to say, in a somewhat muffled
voice, entirely owing to plum cake and not grief, "that one of us is
married too?"

"My father," returned Nan loftily, "is not given to making mistakes of
that kind. There weren't husbands enough to go 'round anyway."

"What is a husband?"

"You've been helping make one, child, and you ask that!"

So Elizabeth conclu