ut.
"I'd like to shake Cousin Abner's girls. This is what Dot Halliday
would call an adventure, Ida."

"Isn't it! Miss Sally and this quaint old spot both seem like a
chapter out of the novels our grandmothers cried over. Look here,
Mary, she is lonely and our visit seems like a treat to her. Let us
try to make it one. Let's just chum with her and tell her all about
ourselves and our amusements and our dresses. That sounds frivolous,
but you know what I mean. She'll like it. Let's be company in real
earnest for her."

When Miss Sally came back, she was attended by Juliana carrying a tray
of lemonade glasses. Juliana proved to be a diminutive lass of about
fourteen whose cheerful, freckled face wore an expansive grin of
pleasure. Evidently Juliana was as fond of "company" as her mistress
was. Afterwards, the girls overheard a subdued colloquy between Miss
Sally and Juliana out in the hall.

"Go set the table, Juliana, and put on Grandmother Temple's wedding
china--be sure you dust it carefully--and the best tablecloth--and be
sure you get the crease straight--and put some sweet peas in the
centre--and be sure they are fresh. I want everything extra nice,
Juliana."

"Yes'm, Miss Sally, I'll see to it. Isn't it great to have company,
Miss Sally?" whispered Juliana.

The Seymour girls long remembered that tea table and the delicacies
with which it was heaped. Privately, they did not wonder that Juliana
had indigestion when she had to eat many such unaided. Being hungry,
they did full justice to Miss Sally's good things, much to that little
lady's delight.

She told them all about herself. She had lived at Golden Gate Cottage
only a year.

"Before that, I lived away down the country at Millbridge with a
cousin. My Uncle Ephraim owned Golden Gate Cottage, and when he died
he left it to me and I came here to live. It is a pretty place, isn't
it? You see those two headlands out there? In the morning, when the
sun rises, the water between them is just a sea of gold, and that is
why Uncle Ephraim had a fancy to call his place Golden Gate. I love it
here. It is so nice to have a home of my own. I would be quite content
if I had more company. But I have you today, and perhaps Beatrice and
Helen will come next week. So I've really a great deal to be thankful
for."

"What is your Cousin Abner's other name?" asked Mary, with a vague
recollection of hearing of Beatrice and Helen--somebody--in Trenton.

"Reed--Abner Abimel