on land, you are not
very convenient for transportation by water. Cambric gowns and French
slippers are highly appropriate and agreeable at the present moment,
but must be sacrificed to the stern necessities of the case. You must
make a dowdy of yourself in some usefully short, scant, dingy costume,
which will try the nerves of all beholders, and triumphantly prove that
women were never meant for such excursions."

"Wait five minutes and I'll triumphantly prove to the contrary,"
answered Sylvia, as she ran into the house.

Her five minutes was sufficiently elastic to cover fifteen, for she was
ravaging her wardrobe to effect her purpose and convince her brother,
whose artistic tastes she consulted, with a skill that did her good
service in the end. Rapidly assuming a gray gown, with a jaunty jacket
of the same, she kilted the skirt over one of green, the pedestrian
length of which displayed boots of uncompromising thickness. Over her
shoulder, by a broad ribbon, she slung a prettily wrought pouch, and
ornamented her hat pilgrim-wise with a cockle shell. Then taking her
brother's alpen-stock she crept down, and standing in the door-way
presented a little figure all in gray and green, like the earth she was
going to wander over, and a face that blushed and smiled and shone as
she asked demurely--

"Please, Mark, am I picturesque and convenient enough to go?"

He wheeled about and stared approvingly, forgetting cause in effect till
Warwick began to laugh like a merry bass viol, and Moor joined him,
saying--

"Come, Mark, own that you are conquered, and let us turn our commonplace
voyage into a pleasure pilgrimage, with a lively lady to keep us knights
and gentlemen wherever we are."

"I say no more; only remember, Sylvia, if you get burnt, drowned, or
blown away, I'm not responsible for the damage, and shall have the
satisfaction of saying, 'There, I told you so.'"

"That satisfaction may be mine when I come home quite safe and well,"
replied Sylvia, serenely. "Now for the last condition."

Warwick looked with interest from the sister to the brother; for, being
a solitary man, domestic scenes and relations possessed the charm of
novelty to him.

"Thirdly, you are not to carry a boat-load of luggage, cloaks, pillows,
silver forks, or a dozen napkins, but are to fare as we fare, sleeping
in hammocks, barns, or on the bare ground, without shrieking at bats or
bewailing the want of mosquito netting; eating when, wh