Part 11 (2/2)

”The very _idea_, auntie!” exclaimed Eunice. ”As if we ever got into mischief! n.o.body looks after us especially, at Kayuna.”

”And, consequently,” said auntie, with a sly smile, ”you go to the cider-mill when you are put in charge of the children, and get run away with by the oxen.”

Eunice got very red.

”Well, that was a great while ago, auntie, when we were quite young,”

she said, with as much dignity as if the occurrence auntie referred to was half a dozen years ago, instead of one. ”Anyway,” changing the subject, ”we'll look after everything now, and you can stay till the last train, if you want to.”

”No, dear, thank you. We'll come on the 5.10, I think, at any rate.

Perhaps earlier, if we accomplish all our business. There! I didn't put on my watch. Edna, will you run up-stairs and get it, from my bureau or table? I think I laid it on the table. No, wait. Have you yours, mother?

Never mind, then, Edna. But will you please put it back in my drawer, when you go up-stairs, dear? Don't forget. Well, good-by. Be good children,” and with a kiss all round, auntie and grandma got into the carriage.

”Good-by. Be sure and bring me some chocolate caramels,” called Edna.

Auntie smiled, nodded, and waved her hand, and then Luke turned the corner, and they rolled away.

”The boys said that the tide would be right for bathing, about eleven,”

Cricket said, after they had watched them out of sight. ”Come on, it's most time,” and off they trooped for their plunge. The children were already over at the Cove, with Eliza, running about in their little blue bathing-suits, though they generally went in only ankle deep. Edna could swim well, and Cricket had made good progress in the last week. Eunice took to the water as naturally as a duck, and, strange to say, had learned to swim well, before Cricket did.

After their bath they came back to the house, where Eunice and Cricket settled themselves on the piazza, to write letters to the travellers.

Cricket kept a journal letter and scribbled industriously every day.

Both Eunice and Cricket had sometimes very homesick moments, when papa and mamma seemed very far away, and Cricket, in particular, occasionally conjured up very gloomy possibilities of her pining away, and dying of homesickness, before they returned, so that when they should come home, they would find only her grave, covered with flowers. She even went so far, in one desperate moment, as to compose a fitting epitaph for her tombstone, which was to be of white marble, of course, with an angel on top.

This was the epitaph.

”Oh, stranger, pause! Beneath this mossy stone Lies a poor child, who died, forsaken and alone.

Her mother far in distant lands did roam, Leaving her daughter, Jean, to die at home.

She pined away in sad and lonely grief, Not any pleasures brought to her relief, And when at last her family returned, With sorrow great, about her death they learned.

So, pause, oh, stranger! drop a single tear, Pity the grief of her who liest here.”

This effusion was the greatest consolation to Cricket. She never showed it to anybody, not even to Eunice, but she often took it out, and read it with much satisfaction, and was almost inclined to begin pining away directly.

But on the whole they were very contented, and it was much easier for them than if they had been left at Kayuna.

Dinner-time--dinner was a one o'clock feast, in the summer--came when they had finished their letters, and had them ready for the mail.

”We'll have the European letters to-night,” said Eunice, joyfully, as they sat down to the table. ”Does it seem as if we'd been here two weeks? Mamma won't seem so far away, when we get the first letters.”

”There was the cablegram,” said Edna.

”That doesn't count,” said Eunice. ”It wasn't mamma's own dear handwriting.”

”Papa writed it,” chirped in Helen.

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