ay be able to bear it.'"

In the mean time Mrs. Dinsmore, who from choice took most of the
housekeeping cares, was ordering an early dinner and various baskets of
provisions for the picnic.

As the family sat down to the table, these last were being conveyed on
board a yacht lying at the little pier near the bathing-place below the
cliffs; and almost immediately upon finishing their meal, all, old and
young, trooped down the stairways, across the sandy beach, and were
themselves soon aboard the vessel.

Others of the company were already seated in it, and the rest following
a few minutes later, and the last basket of provisions being safely
stowed away in some safe corner of the craft, they set sail, dragging at
their stern a dory in which was a large quantity of clams in the shell.

It was a bright day, and a favorable breeze sent the yacht skimming over
the water at an exhilarating rate of speed. All hearts seemed light,
every face was bright, not excepting Lulu's, though she was attired in
the plain colored dress recommended by Grandma Elsie.

There was no greater display of finery than a knot of bright ribbon, on
the part of even the gayest young girl present. Betty wore a black
bunting--one of her school dresses--with a cardinal ribbon at the
throat; Zoe the brown woollen that had for her such mingled associations
of pain and pleasure, and looked wonderfully sweet and pretty in it,
Edward thought.

They sat side by side, and Betty, watching them furtively, said to
herself, "They are for all the world just like a pair of lovers yet,
though they have been married over a year."

Then turning her attention first to Violet and Captain Raymond, then
upon her Aunt and Uncle Dinsmore, she came to the same conclusion in
regard to them also.

"And it was just so with cousin Elsie and her husband," she mused. "I
can remember how devoted they were to each other. But she seems very
happy now, and she well may be, with father, sons and daughters all so
devoted to her. And she's so rich too; never has to consider how to make
one dollar do the work of two; a problem I am so often called upon to
solve. In fact, it is to her and uncle, Bob and I owe our education, and
pretty much everything we have.

"I don't envy her her money, but I do the love that has surrounded her
all her life. She never knew her own mother, to be sure, but her father
petted and fondled her as a child, and was father and mother both to
her, I've oft