s horrid. The child _is_ pretty, and the truth comes
uppermost with her now."

"Haw! haw! haw!" burst with a great crash from Captain Kittridge, who
had come in behind, and stood silently listening during this
conversation; "that's musical now; come here, my little maid, you _are_
too pretty for checked aprons, and no mistake;" and seizing the child in
his long arms, he tossed her up like a butterfly, while her sunny curls
shone in the morning light.

"There's one comfort about the child, Miss Kittridge," said Aunt Roxy:
"she's one of them that dirt won't stick to. I never knew her to stain
or tear her clothes,--she always come in jist so nice."

"She ain't much like Sally, then!" said Mrs. Kittridge. "That girl'll
run through more clothes! Only last week she walked the crown out of my
old black straw bonnet, and left it hanging on the top of a
blackberry-bush."

"Wal', wal'," said Captain Kittridge, "as to dressin' this 'ere
child,--why, ef Pennel's a mind to dress her in cloth of gold, it's none
of our business! He's rich enough for all he wants to do, and so let's
eat our breakfast and mind our own business."

After breakfast Captain Kittridge took the two children down to the
cove, to investigate the state of his boat and tar-kettle, set high
above the highest tide-mark. The sun had risen gloriously, the sky was
of an intense, vivid blue, and only great snowy islands of clouds, lying
in silver banks on the horizon, showed vestiges of last night's storm.
The whole wide sea was one glorious scene of forming and dissolving
mountains of blue and purple, breaking at the crest into brilliant
silver. All round the island the waves were constantly leaping and
springing into jets and columns of brilliant foam, throwing themselves
high up, in silvery cataracts, into the very arms of the solemn
evergreen forests which overhung the shore.

The sands of the little cove seemed harder and whiter than ever, and
were thickly bestrewn with the shells and seaweed which the upturnings
of the night had brought in. There lay what might have been fringes and
fragments of sea-gods' vestures,--blue, crimson, purple, and orange
seaweeds, wreathed in tangled ropes of kelp and sea-grass, or lying
separately scattered on the sands. The children ran wildly, shouting as
they began gathering sea-treasures; and Sally, with the air of an
experienced hand in the business, untwisted the coils of rosy seaweed,
from which every moment she disenga