. Daylight was
the curtain.

"We've got the best balcony seats, haven't we, father?" Barbara said
again, coming to where Mr. Holabird sat, and leaning against the
railing.

"The front row, and season tickets!"

"Every one, all summer. Only think!" said Ruth.

"Pho! You'll get used to it," answered Stephen, as if he knew human
nature, and had got used himself to most things.

CHAPTER II.

AMPHIBIOUS.

"What day of the month is it?" asked Mrs. Holabird, looking up from
her letter.

Ruth told.

"How do you always know the day of the month?" said Rosamond. "You are
as pat as the almanac. I have to stop and think whether anything
particular has happened, to remember _any_ day by, since the first,
and then count up. So, as things don't happen much out here, I'm never
sure of anything except that it can't be more than the thirty-first;
and as to whether it can be that, I have to say over the old rhyme in
my head."

"I know how she tells," spoke up Stephen. "It's that thing up in her
room,--that pious thing that whops over. It has the figures down at
the bottom; and she whops it every morning."

Ruth laughed.

"What do you try to tease her for?" said Mrs. Holabird.

"It doesn't tease her. She thinks it's funny. She laughed, and you
only puckered."

Ruth laughed again. "It wasn't only that," she said.

"Well, what then?"

"To think you knew."

"Knew! Why shouldn't I know? It's big enough."

"Yes,--but about the whopping. And the figures are the smallest part
of the difference. You're a pretty noticing boy, Steve."

Steve colored a little, and his eye twinkled. He saw that Ruth had
caught him out.

"I guess you set it for a goody-trap," he said. "Folks can't help
reading sign-boards when they go by. And besides, it's like the man
that went to Van Amburgh's. I shall catch you forgetting, some fine
day, and then I'll whop the whole over for you."

Ruth had been mending stockings, and was just folding up the last
pair. She did not say any more, for she did not want to tease Stephen
in her turn; but there was a little quiet smile just under her lips
that she kept from pulling too hard at the corners, as she got up and
went away with them to her room.

She stopped when she got to the open door of it, with her basket in
her hand, and looked in from the threshold at the hanging scroll of
Scripture texts printed in large clear letters,--a sheet for each day
of the month,--and made to fold over and