"It's the most wonderful event that ever happened to the Mortons," he ejaculated breathlessly. "I suppose Aunt Louise is telling them in the house everything that has happened to her since before all of us were born, so perhaps you'll tell us all the happy happenings that have happened to you."

Dorothy flushed and Helen, who guessed that the happenings of her aunt's and cousin's lives had not been very happy, hastened to interpose.

"What we want to know even more," she said tactfully, "is what Aunt Louise and you are going to do now. Wouldn't it be just grand if you could live in Rosemont!"

Dorothy's face kindled.

"It would be for me," she agreed. "I've never been where there was any one belonging to me, and—well, that would be a 'happy ending'!"

"Where was Aunt Louise planning to go for the winter?"

"I don't know that she had any plans. She hadn't the last time we talked about it, but that was a long time ago—way back at the time of the fire."

"Why can't you both go home with us? We're going in a day or two, you know."

"Mother's engagement at the art store doesn't end until the first of September. She wouldn't leave them in the lurch."

"No, it wouldn't be right," murmured Helen; "but I want her to rest just as soon as she can."

"She is tired," assented Dorothy, thinking as she answered how much more tired her mother was than any of the Morton cousins could understand. The wear of constant anxiety about bread and butter and shelter is something beyond the understanding of those who have not experienced it. It had made Dorothy older than her years and had turned her mother's hair snow-white at forty-two.

"If only you live in Rosemont," said Ethel Brown, "we can go to school together. Ethel Blue and I have been almost like twins. If you are with us all the time we'll be triplets."

"Oh!" cried Dorothy, clasping her hands.

"Do you suppose they'll tell us what they've decided?" asked Ethel Blue anxiously. "Father will suggest something perfectly fine—he always does—and it will be like the end of a fairy story. You're sure you'd like to live with us?" she questioned anxiously.

Helen gave Ethel Blue a touch to attract her attention, for Dorothy was almost crying. Ethel Blue threw her arm around her and gave her a hug. At that minute Captain Morton's voice was heard calling Dorothy from the house. She jumped up and ran in. When she came back a few minutes later she was radiant.

"It's all arranged," she cried excitedly. "Some money has turned up from somewhere—a lot of it—that belongs to Mother, so we can live wherever we want to, and of course we'd rather live near you people than anywhere else in the world."

"All I've got to say," said Ethel Brown, "is that this is the finest sort of ending to the finest sort of summer. Just think of all the new things we've seen and done since we came up here, but I think the best of all has been starting the Club, because that's going to last."

"I believe we're going to have more fun out of that than out of anything we ever tried," said Helen.

"I know it; I feel it in my bones," cried Ethel Blue, "and now that Dorothy is going to help us with it all winter we'll just make things hum in Rosemont."

Throwing their arms across each other's shoulders, the whole group of them marched along the beach—one, two, three, back; one, two, three, back—chanting in unison