"I cannot understand why the children do not return from the beach. They have been gone so long."

"None too long," sighed Nathalie Lawrence, swinging lazily to and fro in a hammock which was hung across one end of the veranda. "What a heaven it is without them. I declare, Helen," she continued, addressing her sister in aggrieved tone, "we do get a lot of those children, somehow or other. For my part, I cannot see why you let them stay about with us all the time, when they are a thousand times better off with Mary," and she gave a vindictive tug at a rope fastened to the railing, which sent the hammock back and forth with the utmost rapidity.

"Take care, Nat; you will be out next, and there will be a hubbub worse than the children would think of making in their wildest moments."

The young girl who thus spoke laughed a low, musical laugh, and looked up from her book with a pair of wide-open blue eyes.

"Nathalie, as usual, thinks only of herself," said Helen with a frown, as she walked away.

"I never can say one word about those children without raising Helen's ire. She spoils them, and she might as well admit it."

"In my short and uneventful career," responded Jean smiling, "I have not found that people are over-fond of admitting anything, least of all their weaknesses. I don't see how you can expect Helen to be superior to all the rest of the world—yourself and myself included. Now, imagine," she continued tantalizingly, "if anyone insisted upon your admitting your weakness for Mr. Church——"

"Oh, keep quiet, Jean; you are too stupid."

"Dear, dear," cried Jean, jumping up and closing her book, "of course I am, and that is my weakness; so now we are quits."

Nathalie tossed her head as much as her position would permit.

"Jean Lawrence," she said solemnly, "you bore me."

"What a catastrophe!" Jean flung back her head with a merry laugh. "Good-by, dear; you are the picture of injured innocence."

"Jean, come back," cried Nathalie, struggling to obtain an upright position. "I do think you are too bad. Ah, well, some day,"—then breaking into song:

"Rats!" called out a small voice from the lawn below.

Nathalie raised herself on her elbow, and peered through the railing.

"Larry, I am thunderstruck. What is the meaning of that weird expression?"

"Nathalie singing a love song," cried Larry, scampering about on the lawn. "Oh, what fun!"

"Larry," called Helen, coming out once more on to the veranda. "Where are Willie and Gladys? Why did you stay so long? I have been worrying about you."

"Oh, they're coming along. Now, don't you worry, Helen, 'cause we was all right. You don't need never to send Mary with us," he added eagerly, "'cause we wouldn't get drownded, nor nothing, really."

Jean strolled back from the other end of the veranda, and put her hand on Helen's shoulder.

"Larry, love," she said, looking down at her little brother, "your grammar is something to be deplored."

A fleeting smile lit up Helen's pale face and gentle brown eyes.

"Ah, here come the little culprits," she cried, starting forward. "Gladys, my precious baby, I have been worried to death about you. What naughty chicks to have staid so long. Willie, I can never trust you."

Willie was a grave little fellow, the eldest of the three children.

"Why, Helen, we weren't gone long. Gladys was good, and so was Larry—that is pretty——" he added deprecatingly. "The moment I said 'Come on, children,' we all started; only Gladys, she couldn't walk very fast, so Larry wouldn't wait for us. Oh," sighed Willie, his grave little face in a pucker at the recollection, "I would rather Mary went along with Gladys another time."

"Anyhow I was awful good, sister," lisped little Gladys, trying to frown on Willie, "only——"

"Only your short little legs would not carry you any quicker. Is that not so, darling? Well, since you were all good, there is nothing to scold you about."

"Helen's faith is sublime," laughed Jean, in an aside to Nathalie.

Helen took little Gladys in her arms, and sat down in a large rocker, which stood close to the front door.

She was a slender, frail-looking girl. Her soft, brown hair was arranged close to her head with the utmost simplicity, and her rather pale face would perhaps have been plain, had it not been redeemed by a pair of beautiful sad brown eyes. She was the eldest of the Lawrences, and it seemed to her only a brief time since the Angel of Death had, twice in one short year, visited their home, leaving them bereft of father and mother.

Her father had been a physician of undoubted skill, a man of wide learning and great culture. Had the lash of poverty given an incentive to his somewhat lagging spirit, he might have commanded the attention and the admiration of his fellow-men; but his was a nature of great shyness and reserve, and when his father died, leaving him a comfortable fortune, he had, with an almost unconscious sigh of relief, turned his back on ambition and withdrawn to the old homestead in the sleepy little town of Hetherford, content with a small country practice which left him undisturbed hours among his books and in his laboratory.

Mrs. Lawrence's inclinations were thoroughly social; but so unbounded was her faith in her husband's judgment that it never occurred to her to complain of the narrowness and isolation of their life in Hetherford. As her girls grew older, however, she reproached herself with the thought that she was hardly doing them justice in thus secluding them from the advantages of contact with the great world which lay beyond their own pretty village. She appeased her conscience by giving them occasional visits to town and one long, happy summer in Europe, which they had enjoyed to their hearts' content.

The winter following this last delightful holiday, Dr. Lawrence had been stricken with a fatal illness and, after weeks of suffering, had passed away.

Mrs. Lawrence survived this blow but two months, and at little Gladys' birth had turned to Helen with a weary, heartbroken sigh:

"My darling, I am so lonely—your father. Take care of the little ones—this wee lamb. God bless you, my——"

Helen had sunk speechless at her mother's bedside, until the sound of a wailing cry brought her once more to herself.

"My dear," said gentle Aunt Helen, leaning over her, "won't you take the poor little baby? Perhaps she will help to comfort you."

And Helen took her little sister in her arms, and made her way into the nursery, where, in two small cribs, side by side, lay her little brothers, fast asleep.

Jean and Nathalie stood by the nursery window, looking out into the night. At Helen's entrance they turned sharply.

"O Helen, how is mamma?" Jean stopped short, appalled at the change in her sister's face.

"Helen," she cried, a sharp ring of pain in her voice, "mamma is not—"

"Yes, Jean—Nathalie—mamma is gone. Oh, what shall we do," Helen moaned.

"My poor children," said Aunt Helen tenderly, crossing the room and putting an arm around little Nathalie, and clasping Jean's hand tightly in hers; "your dear mamma is gone. She was so sad and lonely without papa. Oh, darlings! do not grieve, but think of her as happy and at rest. You, Helen, must learn to be a mother to these little sisters and brothers, and teach them all your dear mamma would have them know. And Jean and even little Nathalie, too, can help."

"Auntie"—Helen's tears were falling fast—"I will do all I can. Poor baby," she whispered, and she kissed the soft little face, which was nestled in her arms, and then she turned toward the cribs, and looked with loving eyes at the sleeping children. "God bless them, and help me."

Since that sad night six years had rolled by. Nathalie was now eighteen, Jean her elder by two years, and Helen's twenty-third birthday was close at hand. Larry and Willie were respectively eight and ten, and little Gladys was fast outgrowing her babyhood.

Aunt Helen, Mrs. Dennis, had since Mrs. Lawrence's death made her permanent home with her nieces and nephews. She was a sweet, gentle woman, a widow and childless, and her lonely life had been thus gladdened by the love of this household of happy-go-lucky children. She had always been delicate, and during the past few years had become so great an invalid that she rarely left her room.

Thus Helen Lawrence had been obliged to assume unusual cares and responsibilities for so young a girl, and these were not without their effect on her mind and character.

For years the manor house of Hetherford had been in the possession of the Lawrences, and no family in the town was better known, or more universally loved. The manor itself was a charming old park, stretching out far enough to make it no small walk to compass its grounds. Grand old trees shaded the well-kept lawns, and pretty graveled paths, lined with box-wood, led hither and thither.

The house was old-fashioned in the extreme, large, square, and commodious. A broad veranda ran around three sides of it, and across the front there was an upper balcony, which, in the season, was covered with trailing vines of roses, honeysuckles, and passion flowers. During the warm summer days this was a favorite retreat of the girls. A few rugs were thrown down, comfortable wicker chairs were scattered here and there, and on the low round table in the center there was always a motley collection of books, writing materials, and work-baskets. Through occasional openings in the vines were revealed pretty vistas of lawn and flowering rosebeds, beyond which stretched the blue waters of the sound, sparkling in the sunshine as if strewn with a thousand jewels. It was, indeed, an Arcadian spot.

Within doors everything was equally old-fashioned and comfortable. Opening on to the broad hall, which ran through the middle of the house, were four large airy rooms, simply but substantially furnished, and with an unmistakable air of being lived in. Upstairs, in addition to the rooms occupied by the family, each one of which was bright and cheery, and clearly revealed the individuality of its occupant, were several guest chambers, with heavy four-post bedsteads and quaint mahogany dressing-tables, and during the summer season these were rarely untenanted, for the Lawrences' hospitality was as old-fashioned as their home.

Quiet Hetherford was almost unknown as a summer resort, but the few people who had once found their way there came again and again, and with them all the Lawrences were on intimate and friendly terms. It was not strange that young men came but rarely to this out-of-the-way little village, but a colony of girls thrived and were happy there; happier, perhaps, for this very lack of the masculine element. The girls often laughed merrily over it, and no one of them seemed to take it very much to heart, save pretty little dark-eyed Emily Varian, who spent her summers with her uncle, Dr. Evelyn Birdsall, the Presbyterian minister.

"It is deplorable," she sighed, "and if the girls were not selfishly lazy they could quite easily get some men to come out here. Certainly town is not so far off as to make us quite out of the world. It is nothing but stupid nonsense and vanity on the girls' part. They think it is something fine and independent never to see anything of men. For my part, I should think they would be ashamed of it."

There was one girl who always laughed good-humoredly at Emily's grumbling, and she was none other than charming Eleanor Hill. However, she had less cause to complain, for while Emily went from her winter home in one little country town to sleepier Hetherford for the summer months, Miss Hill for more than half of every year led the gayest of lives in New York. When June came with its warm sunshine and long days, she and her mother gladly turned their face toward pretty, dreamy Hetherford; to them the dearest spot in the world.

Mollie Andrews said that, for her part, she didn't care. Taking it all in all, she did not see but that they had a pretty good time. The Andrews had been coming to Hetherford for years, and were all deeply attached to the place; Mollie's handsome, scatterbrained brother Dick had set the seal of his approval on their choice of a summer resort, and thenceforth Mollie would have deemed it nothing short of heresy to call the place stupid. To be sure, Dick rarely turned up oftener than once a week, but then her cousin Clifford Archer, nicknamed "the fatal beauty," was wont to put in an appearance for a few days, frequently with his great chum Wendell Churchill, whose yacht was quite a familiar object in Hetherford Harbor.

"It is perfectly absurd of Emily," Mollie would end, with a toss of her head.

Emily always looked scornful, and Nan Birdsall, happy-go-lucky Nan, who rarely went away from Hetherford, would laugh gleefully.

"Poor Em," she exclaimed one evening, after one of her cousin's tirades, "you are man-crazy. Never mind, dear; you wait. I know a thing or two, and by and by when my ship comes in," looking around at the girls, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, "you will be surprised. Perhaps we will have more men here than we have bargained for."

"What do you mean, Nan?" they cried in chorus; but not a bit of satisfaction would Nan give them.

The parsonage adjoined the manor, and an opening in the hedge made intercourse between the two families an easy matter. Just across the road was the inn, where all the summer visitors stayed, and a quainter retreat could not be imagined. They formed only a small circle of people, but many were the happy times they had together.