of it, and so the people when they walked that way scarcely knew
when they entered the park, or when they left it.

The home of Mrs. Cliff, itself, had seemed to her to be casting off its
newness and ripening into the matured home. Much of this was due to work
which had been done upon the garden and surrounding grounds, but much
more was due to the imperceptible influence of the Misses Thorpedyke.
These ladies had not only taken with them to the house so many of the
time-honored objects which they had saved from their old home, but they
had brought to bear upon everything around them the courtly tastes of
the olden time.

Willy Croup had declared, as she stood in the hall gazing up at the
staircase, that it often seemed to her, since she came back, as if her
grandfather had been in the habit of coming down those stairs. "I never
saw him," she said, "and I don't know what sort of stairs he used to
come down, but there's something about all this which makes me think of
things far back and grand, and I know from what I've heard of him that
he would have liked to come down such stairs."

Mrs. Horn and her husband had made a long visit to Mrs. Cliff, and they
had departed early in the summer for a great property they had bought in
the West, which included mountains, valleys, a canon, and such far
extending groves of golden fruit that Edna already called the Captain
"The Prince of Orange."

Edna's brother, Ralph, had also been in Plainton. He had come there to
see his sister and Captain Horn, and that splendid old woman, Mrs.
Cliff, but soon after he reached the town it might well be supposed it
was Mr. Burke whom he came to visit. This worthy mariner and builder
still lived in Plainton. His passion for an inland residence had again
grown upon him, and he seemed to have given up all thoughts of the sea.
He and Ralph had royal times together, and if the boy had not felt that
he must go with Captain Horn and his sister to view the wonders of the
far West, he and Burke would have concocted some grand expedition
intended for some sort of an effect upon the civilization of the world.

But although Mrs. Cliff, for many reasons, had no present desire to
leave her home, she did not relinquish the enterprise for which the
_Summer Shelter_ had been designed. When Captain Hagar had gone to
London and had reported to his owners the details of his dire and
disastrous misfortune, he had been made the subject of censure and
severe crit