nd she wants you for company.
May be she goes for her health."

"I think quite a good many people go there, grandma."

"There can't, if they're little islands out at sea. Most folks wouldn't
like that. Do you want to go, Lois?"

"I would like it, very much. I just want to see what they are like,
grandmother. I never did see the sea yet."

"You saw it yesterday, when we went for clams," said Charity scornfully.

"That? O no. That's not the sea, Charity."

"Well, it's mighty near it."

It seemed to be agreed at last that Lois should accept her cousin's
invitation; and she made her preparations. She made them with great
delight. Pleasant as the home-life was, it was quite favourable to the
growth of an appetite for change and variety; and the appetite in Lois
was healthy and strong. The sea and the islands, and, on the other
hand, an intermission of gardening and fruit-picking; Shampuashuh
people lost sight of for a time, and new, new, strange forms of
humanity and ways of human life; the prospect was happy. And a happy
girl was Lois, when one evening in the early part of August she joined
Mrs. Wishart in the night train to Boston. That lady met her at the
door of the drawing-room car, and led her to the little compartment
where they were screened off from the rest of the world.

"I am so glad to have you!" was her salutation. "Dear me, how well you
look, child! What have you been doing to yourself?"

"Getting brown in the sun, picking berries."

"You are not brown a bit. You are as fair as--whatever shall I compare
you to? Roses are common."

"Nothing better than roses, though," said Lois.

"Well, a rose you must be; but of the freshest and sweetest. We don't
have such roses in New York. Fact, we do not. I never see anything so
fresh there. I wonder why?"

"People don't live out-of-doors picking berries," suggested Lois.

"What has berry-picking to do with it? My dear, it is a pity we shall
have none of your old admirers at the Isles of Shoals; but I cannot
promise you one. You see, it is off the track. The Caruthers are going
to Saratoga; they stayed in town after the mother and son got back from
Florida. The Bentons are gone to Europe. Mr. Dillwyn, by the way, was
he one of your admirers, Lois?"

"Certainly not," said Lois, laughing. "But I have a pleasant
remembrance of him, he gave us such a good lunch one day. I am very
glad I am not going to see anybody I ever saw before. Where _are_ the
Isles of