ot a healthy one. It is Nature's way to make first a healthy animal,
and then develop in it gradually higher faculties. We have seen our two
children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally developed. There
will come a time, by and by in the history of the boy, when the haze of
dreamy curiosity will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague
yearnings, and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him, but
it must be some years hence.

* * * * *

Here for a season we leave both our child friends, and when ten years
have passed over their heads,--when Moses shall be twenty, and Mara
seventeen,--we will return again to tell their story, for then there
will be one to tell. Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara
read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess with
Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood,--but how by herself she
learns, after divers trials, to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and
trailing arbutus,--how Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally
grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to the high
school,--how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and Miss Roxy and Miss
Ruey nurse and cut and make and mend for the still rising
generation,--how there are quiltings and tea-drinkings and prayer
meetings and Sunday sermons,--how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old
gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the eternal
silver tide rises and falls around our little gem, Orr's Island.

CHAPTER XVIII

SALLY

"Now, where's Sally Kittridge! There's the clock striking five, and
nobody to set the table. Sally, I say! Sally!"

"Why, Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "Sally's gone out more'n an
hour ago, and I expect she's gone down to Pennel's to see Mara; 'cause,
you know, she come home from Portland to-day."

"Well, if she's come home, I s'pose I may as well give up havin' any
good of Sally, for that girl fairly bows down to Mara Lincoln and
worships her."

"Well, good reason," said the Captain. "There ain't a puttier creature
breathin'. I'm a'most a mind to worship her myself."

"Captain Kittridge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, at your age,
talking as you do."

"Why, laws, mother, I don't feel my age," said the frisky Captain,
giving a sort of skip. "It don't seem more'n yesterday since you and I
was a-courtin', Polly. What a life you did lead me in them days! I think
you kep' me on the anxio