each other
and Albert Austin in attentions to Lucilla, leaving Miss Austin to the
charge of Harold and Herbert, who were careful to make sure that she
should have no cause to feel herself neglected.

They spent some time in viewing the marvels of the Electric Building,
finding the lights giving it a truly magical splendor not perceptible by
day. It seemed full of enchantment, a veritable hall of marvels; they were
delighted and fascinated with the glories of the displays, and lingered
there longer than they had intended.

On passing out, the party broke up, the Austins bidding good-by and going
in one direction, Croly carrying off Rosie in another, the Pleasant Plains
people vanishing in still another.

"Will you take a boat ride with me, Lucilla?" asked Chester in a rather
low aside.

"If the rest are going," she returned laughingly. "I'm such a baby that I
cling to my father and don't want to go anywhere without him."

"You mean the captain does not allow it?" Chester said enquiringly, and
with a look of slight vexation.

"Oh," she laughed, "I'm not apt to ask for what I don't want, and I never
want to be without papa's companionship."

"Humph! I had really labored under the delusion that you were grown up."

"Does that mean, ready to dispense with my father's society? In that case
I don't mean ever to be grown up," she returned with spirit.

"Well, really!" laughed Chester, "if I am not mistaken, my sisters
considered themselves about grown up, and altogether their own mistresses
when they were no older than you are now; though, to be sure, I don't
profess to know your age exactly."

"You may look at the record in the family Bible the next time you visit
Woodburn, if you care to," Lucilla said, with a careless little toss of
her head. "Yon will find the date of my birth there in papa's handwriting,
from which your knowledge of arithmetic will enable you to compute my
present age."

"Thank you," he said, laughing, but with a look of slight embarrassment,
"I am entirely satisfied with the amount of knowledge I already possess on
that subject."

"Ah, what subject is that upon which you are so well informed, Chester?"
queried Captain Raymond pleasantly, overhearing the last remark, and
turning toward the young couple.

"Your daughter's age, sir. I invited her to take a ride with me upon the
lagoon, in one of those electrical launches; but find she is but a young
thing and cannot leave her father."

"Ah?