ancestors who followed the
sea brought home the greater part of its furnishings. Miss Katharine was
a person who ignored all frivolities, and her house was as sedate as
herself. I have been there but little, for when I was a child my aunt
found no pleasure in the society of noisy children who upset her
treasures, and when I was older she did not care to see strangers, and
after I left school she grew more and more feeble; I had not been there
for two years when she died. Mamma went down very often. The town is a
quaint old place which has seen better days. There are high rocks at the
shore, and there is a beach, and there are woods inland, and hills, and
there is the sea. It might be dull in Deephaven for two young ladies who
were fond of gay society and dependent upon excitement, I suppose; but
for two little girls who were fond of each other and could play in the
boats, and dig and build houses in the sea-sand, and gather shells, and
carry their dolls wherever they went, what could be pleasanter?"

"Nothing," said I, promptly.

Kate had told this a little at a time, with a few appropriate bars of
music between, which suddenly reminded me of the story of a Chinese
procession which I had read in one of Marryat's novels when I was a
child: "A thousand white elephants richly caparisoned,--ti-tum
tilly-lily," and so on, for a page or two. She seemed to have finished
her story for that time, and while it was dawning upon me what she
meant, she sang a bit from one of Jean Ingelow's verses:--

"Will ye step aboard, my dearest,
For the high seas lie before us?"

and then came over to sit beside me and tell the whole story in a more
sensible fashion.

"You know that my father has been meaning to go to England in the
autumn? Yesterday he told us that he is to leave in a month and will be
away all summer, and mamma is going with him. Jack and Willy are to join
a party of their classmates who are to spend nearly the whole of the
long vacation at Lake Superior. I don't care to go abroad again now, and
I did not like any plan that was proposed to me. Aunt Anna was here all
the afternoon, and she is going to take the house at Newport, which is
very pleasant and unexpected, for she hates housekeeping. Mamma thought
of course that I would go with her, but I did not wish to do that, and
it would only result in my keeping house for her visitors, whom I know
very little; and she will be much more free and independent by herse