editerranean,
and brought home many queer things."

"Oh, that is the portrait hanging in the big room at Arch Street, and is
Captain Wardour?" exclaimed Primrose. "And where did he go at last?"

"To a very far country, across the great sky. He was lost at sea."

Madam Wetherill sighed a little. How long ago it seemed, and yet,
strange contradiction, it might have been not more than a month since
Captain Wardour bade her good-by with the promise that it should be his
last voyage and then he would come home for good and they would marry.
This love and waiting had bound her to the New World. She had made many
friends and prospered, and there had been a sweet, merry young girl
growing up under her eye, which had been a rather indulgent one, and who
had fallen in love with Philemon Henry, and perhaps coquetted a little
until she had the Quaker heart in her net he did not care to break if
she could come over to his faith. It had disappointed Madam Wetherill at
first, but having had business dealings with him, she had learned to
respect his integrity.

But as if there seemed a cruel fate following her loves, just as it was
settled for Bessy to come back with her little Primrose, death claimed
her. And Madam Wetherill had tried to keep a fair indifference toward
the child since she could not have her altogether, but the little one
had somehow crept into her heart. And now that there were two girls at
James Henry's farm, the wife's own nieces, she could see they would the
more readily relinquish her. The sending back of the child seemed to
indicate that, though she had only gone for a visit.

"Art thou sad about Captain Wardour?" And the little maid looked up with
lustrous and sympathetic eyes, wondering at the long silence. "And do
you think he could find my mother and my father? It must be a beautiful
world, that heaven, if it is so much finer and better than this, and
flowers bloom all the time and the trees never get stripped by the cruel
autumn winds and the birds go on singing. I shall love to listen to
them. But, aunt, what will people do who are like Rachel and think
listening idle and sinful, and that flowers are fripperies that spoil
the hay and prevent the grass from growing in that space?"

"I am not sure myself." Madam Wetherill laughed at the quaint conceit.

There were many gay Friends in town whose consciences were not so
exigent, who believed in education and leisure and certainly wore fine
clothes, if on