ater than yours. You wouldn't take a cent from me at the time,
but you've got to let me have my way now. Celia goes with me--if you
agree. Charlotte goes to her art school, and if you refuse me the fun of
assuming both expenses, I'll be tremendously offended--no joke, I
shall."

He looked so fierce that everybody laughed--somewhat tremulously. There
could be no doubt that he meant all he said. Celia's cheeks were pink
with excitement; Mrs. Birch's were of a similar hue, in sympathy with
her daughter's joy.

"I tell you, that girl Charlotte," began the captain again, "deserves
all anybody can do for her. She has developed three years in one. Fond
as I've always been of her, I hadn't the least idea what was in the
child. She's going to make a woman of a rare sort. Look here!" A new
idea flashed into his mind.

He considered it for the space of a half-minute, then brought it forth:

"Let me take her, too. Not for the year--don't look as if I'd hit you,
Helen--just till October. I mean to sail in ten days, you know. I've
engaged plenty of room. There'll be no trouble about a berth----"

"O Uncle Ray!" Celia interrupted him. There could be no question about
her unselfish soul. If she had been happy before, she was rapturous now.

"Three months will give her quite a journey," the captain hurried on,
leaving nobody any time for objections. "I'll see that she gets art
enough out of it to fill her to the brim with inspiration. And there
will surely be somebody she can come back with. May I have her?"

"What shall we do with you?" his sister said, softly. "I can't deny
you--or her. If her father agrees----"

"If I didn't know your big heart so well, Jack," said Roderick Birch,
slowly, "I should be too proud to accept so much, even from my wife's
brother. But I believe it would be unworthy of me--or of you--to let
false pride stand in my girls' way."

From the distance two figures were approaching, one in blue linen, the
other in white flannel--Charlotte and Doctor Churchill.

They were talking gaily, laughing like a pair of very happy children,
and carrying between them a great bunch of daisies and buttercups that
would have hid a church pulpit from view.

"Let's tell her now," proposed Celia. "I can't wait to have her know."

"Go ahead," agreed her uncle. "And let the doctor hear it, too. If he
isn't a brother of the family, it's because the family doesn't know one
of the finest fellows on the face of the earth when