y, but now she has
decided that she would rather be an authoress like her aunt."

"Wouldn't you like to go to Navesink and make Lulu a visit?" Mr.
Hamilton asked.

Winifred looked a little wistful, but she shook her head decidedly.

"Not without mother. If mother could go too, I should love it better
than anything else in the world."

Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton exchanged glances, but they were both silent, and
nothing more was said on the subject.

As soon as they rose from the breakfast table, Winifred went to put her
letter away in the little box where she kept all her treasures, but
before doing so she sat down on the edge of her bed, and read it all
over again from beginning to end. When she had finished, her face looked
even more wistful than before.

"I should like to go, oh, I should like it very much," she said, with a
long sigh, "but I couldn't go anywhere without mother. I suppose when
people have only had mothers a little while like me, they feel
differently about leaving them from the people who have had them all the
time."

The fact was, Winifred was feeling a little bit lonely. It was very warm
in the city, and now that school was over, and all her friends had left
town, she found time hang somewhat heavy on her hands. The children were
a great comfort, of course, and her mother was everything to her, but
she missed the work and the companionship of school, and there were
times on those hot summer days when even story books seemed to have lost
their charms.

She and Betty had become great friends during the time when Jack was in
the hospital, and when Dr. Bell had decided that the seashore was the
place for Jack, and the Randalls had given up their flat, and gone for
the summer to board at Navesink--the kind doctor having procured
accommodation for them in a house not far from his own--Winifred,
although rejoicing heartily in her friends' good fortune, could not help
feeling very forlorn without them. It was two weeks now since the
Randalls had gone away, and Lulu's letter was the first news Winifred
had received from any of her friends.

On this particular morning things were unusually dull. It was very hot,
for one thing, and then her mother and Lizzie were both very busy in
the kitchen, putting up strawberry preserves. Lulu's letter had
suggested so many pleasant possibilities too. Certainly sea bathing and
playing shipwreck in a real boat sounded much more attractive than
reading story books in