Mary in her absence.

When "Miss Mamie Gemmell" joined us at Interlaken for the summer her
convent manners lasted for about two weeks, and then gave place to those
of a spoiled and pampered daughter of the house.

We in America are accustomed to disrespectfulness and waywardness in our
own children, but to notice the same attitude in a little nobody from
nowhere we have taken in out of charity, makes a man or woman stand
aghast.

"I don't believe she cares a straw for me personally," Belle would say
sometimes, "but I must confess I like her better than the cringing,
fawning variety. She's outspoken in her impertinent demands."

* * * * *

After a very hot week in July I joyfully took the train on Saturday
afternoon for the five miles' ride to Interlaken, and went to sleep that
night with my ears full of the sound of waves and pine trees; my heart
filled with the satisfaction of knowing that I had a whole round day
ahead of me--a sunrise and a sunset at either end.

I omitted the sunrise part of the programme, but between ten and eleven
I was ready for a walk down the pier to watch the bathers. American
women are seldom plump enough to stand the undress uniform of a bathing
costume. They run to extremes--become very stout indeed, or else very
thin, but in girlhood the tendency is to over-slimness.

I was thinking what a contrast our summer girls would present to a
group of Scotch lasses, though, to be sure, I was never privileged to
see any of the latter in bathing-dress, when a well-rounded apparition
in sky blue luster and no bathing cap emerged from one of the disrobing
houses. This damsel betook herself boldly to the pier, instead of
splashing around the edge of the sand as the others were doing, and,
coming near the end, took a run and then a beautiful header into the
deep blue water.

She had passed me too quickly to be recognized, but as her face appeared
above the surface I saw it belonged to no other than our adopted
daughter, for as such, at the moment, was I pleased to own her. She
shook the water out of her ears, gave her knob of hair an extra twist,
brushed back the ringlets that threatened her eyes, and looked as much
at home as if there were eighteen feet of land, instead of eighteen feet
of water below her.

There were several young men swimming about at the end of the wharf, and
they declared with gusto that a springboard must be erected for "Miss
Gemmell" at onc