he appointed time; but true as the hands of the
clock to mark the hour and minute on the dial-plate, they set out for
Captain Hardy's house as fast as they could go,--as if their very lives
depended on their speed. They found the Captain seated in the shady
arbor, smoking a long clay pipe. "I'm glad to see you, children," was
his greeting to them; and glad enough he was too,--much more glad,
maybe, than he would care to own,--as glad, perhaps, as the children
were themselves.

"And now, my dears," continued he, "shall we have the story? There is no
wind, you see, so we cannot have a sail."

"O, the story! yes, yes, the story," cried the children, all at once.

"Then the story it shall be," replied the old man; "but first you must
sit down,"--and the children sat down upon the rustic seat, and closed
their mouths, and opened wide their ears, prepared to listen; while the
Captain knocked the ashes from his long clay pipe, and stuck it in the
rafter overhead, and clearing up his throat, prepared to talk.

"Now you must know," began the Captain, "that I cannot finish the story
I'm going to tell you all in one day,--indeed, I can only just begin it.
It's a very long one, so you must come down to-morrow, and next day,
and every bright day after that until we've done. Does that please you?"

"Yes, yes," was the ready answer, and little Alice laughed loud with
joy.

"Will you be sure to remember the name of the place you come to? Will
you remember that its name is 'Mariner's Rest'? Will you remember that?"

"Yes, indeed we will."

"And now for the boat we're to have a sail in by and by; what do you
think I've called that?" asked the Captain.

"Sea-Gull?" guessed William.

"Water-Witch?" guessed Fred.

"White Dove?" guessed Alice.

"All wrong," said the Captain, smiling a smile of the greatest
satisfaction. "I've painted the name on her in bright golden letters,
and when you go down again to look at her, you'll see _Alice_ there, and
the letters are just the color of some little girl's hair I know of."

"Is that really her name?" shouted both the boys at once, glad as they
could be; "how jolly!" But little Alice said never a word, but crept
close to the old man's side, and the old man put his great, big arm
around the child's small body, and as the soft sunlight came stealing in
through the openings in the foliage of the trees, flinging patches of
brightness here and there upon the grass around, the Captain began