n
some mysterious way, Mrs. Wood came into the room, and the three parents
stood watching the unconscious children.

"That's the last of one trial with those boys, I'm sure," said Mr. Ford,
laughing, and he was right; for it was years before any one heard either
Johnnie or Chips mention Robinson Crusoe or his Man Friday.

CHAPTER XV

ST. VALENTINE

After that day when, on the lee side of the sand-dune the Evringham family
read together the story of Johnnie and Chips, it was some time before the
last tale in the story book was called for.

The farmhouse where they boarded stood near a pond formed by the rushing in
of the sea during some change in the sands of the beach, so here was still
another water playmate for Jewel.

"I do hope," said Mr. Evringham meditatively, on the first morning that he
and Jewel stood together on its green bank, "I do hope that very particular
housekeeper, Nature, will let this pond alone until we go!"

Jewel looked up at his serious face with the lines between the eyes. "She
wouldn't touch this great big pond, would she?" she asked.

"Ho! Wouldn't she? Well, I guess so."

"But," suggested Jewel, lifting her shoulders, "she's too busy in summer in
the ravines and everywhere."

"Oh," Mr. Evringham nodded his head knowingly. "Nature looks out for
everything."

"Grandpa!" Jewel's eyes were intent. "Would she ask Summer to touch this
great big pond? What would she want to do it for?"

"Oh, more house-cleaning, I suppose."

The child chuckled as she looked out across the blue waves, rippling in
the wind and white-capped here and there, "When you know it's washed all
the _time_, grandpa," she responded. "The waves are just scrubbing it now.
Can't you see?"

"Yes," the broker nodded gravely. "No doubt that is why she has to empty it
so seldom. Sometimes she lets it go a very long time; but then the day
comes when she begins to think it over, and to calculate how much sediment
and one thing and another there is in the bottom of that pond; and at last
she says, 'Come now, out it must go!'"

"But how can she get it out, how?" asked Jewel keenly interested. "The
brooks are all running somewhere, but the pond doesn't. How can she dip it
out? It would take Summer's hottest sun a year!"

"Yes, indeed, Nature is too clever to try that. The winds are her servants,
you know, and they understand their business perfectly; so when she says
'That pond needs to be cleaned out,' they merel