Great was the rejoicing of the whole household when at last Marjorie was able to come downstairs once more.

Uncle Steve assisted her down. He didn't carry her, for he said she was far too much of a heavyweight for any such performance as that, but he supported her on one side, and with a banister rail on the other she managed beautifully.

And, anyway, her ankle was just about as well as ever. The doctor had not allowed the active child to come downstairs until there was little if any danger that an imprudence on her part might injure her again.

It was Saturday afternoon, and though she could not be allowed to walk about the place until the following week, yet Uncle Steve took her for a long, lovely drive behind Ned and Dick, and then brought her back to another jolly little surprise.

This was found in a certain sheltered corner of one of the long verandas. It was so built that it was almost like a cosy, little square room; and climbing vines formed a pleasant screen from the bright sunlight. To it Uncle Steve had brought a set of wicker furniture: dear little chairs and a table and a settee, all painted green. Then there was a green-and-white hammock swung at just the right height, and containing two or three fat, jolly-looking, green pillows, in the midst of which Puff had chosen to curl herself up for a nap.

There was a little bamboo bookcase, with a few books and papers, and a large box covered with Japanese matting, which had a hinged lid, and was lovely to keep things in. There was a rug on the floor, and Japanese lanterns hung from the ceiling, all in tones of green and white and silver.

Marjorie unceremoniously dislodged Puff from her comfortable position, and flung herself into the hammock instead.

"Uncle Steve!" she exclaimed, grabbing that gentleman tightly round the neck as he leaned over her to adjust her pillows, "you are the best man in the whole world, and I think you ought to be President! If you do any more of these lovely things for me I shall just—just SUFFOCATE with joy. What makes you so good to me, anyhow?"

"Oh, because you're such a little saint, and never do anything naughty or mischievous!"

"That's a splendid reason," cried Marjorie, quite appreciating the joke, "and, truly, Uncle Steve,—don't you tell,—it's a great secret: but I AM going to try to be more dignified and solemn."

This seemed to strike Uncle Steve as being very funny, for he sat down on the little wicker settee and laughed heartily.

"Well, you may as well begin now, then; and put on your most dignified and pompous manner, as you lie there in that hammock, for I'm going to read to you until tea-time."

"Goody, goody!" cried Marjorie, bobbing up her curly head, and moving about excitedly. "Please, Uncle, read from that new book you brought me last night. I'll get it!"

"That's a nice, dignified manner, that is! Your Serene Highness will please calm yourself, and stay just where you are. I shall select the book to read from, and I shall do the reading. All you have to do is to lie still and listen."

So Marjorie obeyed, and, of course, Uncle Steve picked out the very book she wanted, and read to her delightfully for an hour or more.

Marjorie's porch, as it came to be called, proved to be a favorite resort all summer long for the family and for any guests who came to the house. Marjorie herself almost lived in it for the first few days after she came downstairs, but at last the doctor pronounced her ankle entirely well, and said she might "start out to find some fresh mischief."

So the next morning, directly after breakfast, she announced her intention of going down to see the boathouse.

"Just think," she exclaimed, "I have never seen it yet, and King told me to go down there the very first thing."

"I suppose you'll come back half-drowned," said Grandma, "but as you seem unable to learn anything, except by mistakes, go ahead. But, Marjorie, do try not to do some absurd thing, and then say that I haven't forbidden it! I don't forbid you to go in the boat, if Carter goes with you, but I do forbid you to go alone. Will you remember that?"

"Yes, Grandma, truly I will," said Marjorie, with such a seraphic smile that her grandmother kissed her at once.

"Then run along and have a good time; and don't jump off the dock or anything foolish."

"I won't," cried Marjorie, gayly; and then she went dancing down the path to the garden. Carter was in the greenhouse potting some plants.

"Carter," said Marjorie, putting her head in at the door, "are you very busy?"

"Busy, indeed! I have enough work here with these pesky plants to keep me steady at it till summer after next. Busy, is it? I'm so busy that the bees and the ants is idle beside me. Busy? Well, I AM busy!"

But as the good-natured old man watched Marjorie's face, and saw the look of disappointment settling upon it, he said: "But what matters that? If so be, Miss Midget, I can do anything for you, you've only to command."

"Well, Carter, I thought this morning I'd like to go down to see the boathouse; and I thought, perhaps,—maybe, if you weren't busy, you might take me for a little row in the boat. Just a little row, you know—not very far."

It would have taken a harder heart than Carter's to withstand the pleading tones and the expectant little face; and the gardener set down his flower-pots, and laid down his trowel at once.

"Did your grandmother say you could go, Miss Midget?"

"She said I could go if you went with me."

"Then it's with ye I go, and we'll start at once."

Marjorie danced along by the side of the old man as he walked more slowly down the garden path, when suddenly a new idea came into her head.

"Oh, Carter," she cried, "have my seeds come up yet? And what are the flowers? Let's go and look at them."

"Come up yet, is it? No, indeed, they've scarcely settled themselves down in the earth yet."

"I wish they would come up, I want to see what they'll be. Let's go and look at the place where we planted them, Carter."

So they turned aside to the flowerbed where the precious seeds had been planted, but not even Marjorie's sharp eyes could detect the tiniest green sprout. With an impatient little sigh she turned away, and as they continued down toward the boathouse, Marjorie heard somebody calling, and Molly Moss came flying up to her, all out of breath.

"We were so afraid we wouldn't catch you," she exclaimed, "for your
Grandma said you had gone out in the boat."

"We haven't yet," answered Marjorie, "but we're just going. Oh, Carter, can we take Molly, too?"

"And Stella," added Molly. "She's coming along behind."

Sure enough, Stella was just appearing round the corner of the house, and walking as sedately as if on her way to church.

"Hurry up, Stella," called Marjorie. "Can we all go, Carter?"

"Yes, if yees'll set still in the boat and if the other little lady gets here before afternoon. She's the nice, quiet child, but you two are a pair of rascally babies, and I don't know whether it's safe to go on the water with ye. I'm thinkin' I'll take little Miss Stella, and leave ye two behind."

"I don't think you will, Carter," said Marjorie, not at all alarmed by the old man's threat. "I think you'll take all three of us, and we'll sit as still as mice, won't we, Molly?"

"Yes," said Molly; "can we take off our shoes and stockings and hang our feet over the sides of the boat?"

"Oh, yes," cried Marjorie, "that will be lots of fun!"

"Indeed you'll do nothing of the sort," and Carter's honest old face showed that he felt great anxiety concerning his madcap charges. "Ye must promise to sit still, and not move hand or foot, or I'll go back to my work and leave yees on shore."

This awful suggestion brought about promises of strictly good behavior, and as Stella had arrived, the party proceeded to the boathouse.

Stella was mildly pleased at the prospect of a row, and walked demurely by Carter's side, while the other two ran on ahead and reached the boathouse first.

As the door was locked, and they could not open it, Marjorie, who was all impatience to see the boat, proposed that they climb in the window. Molly needed no second invitation, and easily slipped through the little square window, and Marjorie, with a trifle more difficulty, wriggled her own plump little body through after.

As the window was not on the side of the boathouse toward which Carter was approaching, he did not see the performance, and so when he and Stella reach the boathouse a few moments later, they could see nothing at all of the other two girls.

"Merciful powers!" he exclaimed. "Whatever has become of them two witches?"

"Where can they be?" cried Stella, clasping her hands, and opening her eyes wide in alarm.

Old Carter was genuinely frightened. "Miss Marjorie!" he called, loudly. "Miss Molly! Where be ye?"

Meanwhile, the two girls inside the boathouse had carefully scrambled down into the boat and sat quietly on the stern seat. There was a strong breeze blowing, and as the boat swayed up and down on the rippling water, its keel grating against the post to which it was tied, and the doors and windows being tightly shut, they did not hear Carter's voice. They really had no intention of frightening the old man, and supposed he would open the door in a moment.

But Carter's mind was so filled with the thought that the children had fallen into the water that it didn't occur to him to open the boathouse. He went to the edge of the pier, which was a narrow affair, consisting only of two wooden planks and a single hand rail, and gazed anxiously down into the water.

This gave Stella a firm conviction that the girls were drowned, and without another word she began to cry in her own noisy and tumultuous fashion. Poor Carter, already at his wits' end, had small patience with any additional worry.

"Keep still, Miss Stella," he commanded; "it's enough to have two children on me hands drowned without another one raising a hullabaloo. And it's a queer thing, too, if them wicked little rats is drownded, why they don't come up to the surface! My stars! Whatever will the Missus say? But, havin' disappeared so mortal quick, there's no place they can be but under the water. I'll get a boat-hook, and perhaps I can save 'em yet."

Trembling with excitement and bewildered with anxiety, so that he scarcely knew what he did, the old man fitted the key in the lock. He flung open the boathouse door and faced the two children, who sat quietly and with smiling faces in the boat.

"Well, if ye don't beat all! Good land, Miss Marjorie, whatever did ye give me such a scare for? Sure I thought ye was drownded, and I was jest goin' to fish ye up with a boat-hook! My, but you two are terrors! And how did ye get in now? Through the keyhole, I suppose."

"Why, no, Carter," exclaimed Marjorie, who was really surprised at the old man's evident excitement; "we were in a hurry, and the door was locked, so we just stepped in through the window."

"Stepped in through the window, is it? And if the window had been locked ye'd have jest stepped in through the chimley! And if the chimley had been locked, ye'd have stepped into the water, and ducked under, and come up through the floor! When ye're in a hurry, ye stop for nothin', Miss Midget."

The old man's relief at finding the children safe was so great that he was really talking a string of nonsense to hide his feelings.

But Stella, though she realized the girls were all right, could not control her own emotions so easily, and was still crying vociferously.

"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Molly, "what IS the matter with Stella?
Doesn't she want to go boating?"

"Why—yes," sobbed Stella, "b-but I thought you two were drowned."

"Well, we're not!" cried Marjorie, gayly. "So cheer up, Stella, and come along."

Leaving the two girls, as they were already seated, in the stern of the boat, Carter carefully tucked Stella into the bow seat, and then took his own place on the middle thwart. This arrangement enabled him to keep his eye on the two mischievous madcaps, and he had no fear that Stella would cut up any tricks behind his back.

He could not reprove the mischief-makers, for they had done nothing really wrong, but he looked at them grimly as he rowed out into the stream.

"Oh," exclaimed Marjorie, "isn't this just too lovely for anything! Please, Carter, mayn't we just put our hands in the water if we keep our feet in the boat?"

"No," growled Carter; "you'll be wantin' to put your heads in next. Now do set still, like the nice young lady behind me."

Anxious to be good, Marjorie gave a little sigh and folded her hands in her lap, while Molly did likewise.

Carter's eyes twinkled as he looked at the two little martyrs, and his heart relented.

"Ye may just dangle your fingers in the water, if ye want to," he said, "but ye must be careful not to wobble the boat."

The children promised, and then gave themselves up to the delight of holding their hands in the water and feeling the soft ripples run through their fingers.

The row down the river was perfect. The balmy June day, with its clear air and blue sky, the swift, steady motion of the boat impelled by Carter's long, strong strokes, and the soothing sensation of the rushing water subdued even the high spirits of Midge and Molly into a sort of gentle, tranquil happiness.