At the door his wife met them with a troubled and
anxious face.
“Calamities?” asked Frank, desperately.
“O, calamities upon calamities! We’ve
got a lost child in the kitchen,” answered Mrs.
Sallie.
“O good heavens!” cried her husband.
“Adieu, my dreams of repose, so desirable after
the quantity of active enjoyment I’ve had!
Well, where is the lost child?”
“Where is the lost child?” repeats Frank,
desperately. “Where have you got him?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Why in the kitchen?”
“How’s baby?” demands Mrs. Sallie,
with the incoherent suddenness of her sex, and running
halfway down the steps to meet the nurse. “Um,
um, um-m-m-m,” sounds, which may stand for
smothered kisses of rapture and thanksgiving that
baby is not a lost child. “Has he been good,
Lucy? Take him off and give him some cocoa, Mrs.
O’Gonegal,” she adds in her business-like
way, and with a little push to the combined nurse and
baby, while Lucy answers, “O beautiful!”
and from that moment, being warned through all her
being by something in the other’s tone, casts
aside the matronly manner which she has worn during
the day, and lapses into the comfortable irresponsibility
of young-ladyhood.
“What kind of a time did you have?”
“Splendid!” answers Lucy. “Delightful,
I think,” she adds, as if she thought
others might not think so.
“I suppose you found Gloucester a quaint old
place.”
“O,” says Frank, “we didn’t
go to Gloucester; we found that the City Fathers had
chartered the boat for the day, so we thought we’d
go to Nahant.”
“Then you’ve seen your favorite Gardens
of Maolis! What in the world are they
like?”
“Well; we didn’t see the Gardens of Maolis;
the Nahant boat was so crowded that we couldn’t
think of going on her, and so we decided we’d
drive over to the Liverpool Wharf and go down to Nantasket
Beach.”
“That was nice. I’m so glad on Aunt
Melissa’s account. It’s much better
to see the ocean from a long beach than from those
Nahant rocks.”
“That’s what I said. But,
you know, when we got to the wharf the boat had just
left.”
“You don’t mean it! Well,
then, what under the canopy did you do?”
“Why, we sat down in the wharf-house, and waited
from nine o’clock till half-past two for the
next boat.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t back
out, at any rate. You did show pluck, you poor
things! I hope you enjoyed the beach after you
did get there.”
“Why,” says Frank, looking down, “we
never got there.”
“Never got there!” gasps Mrs. Sallie.
“Didn’t you go down on the afternoon boat?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you get to the beach, then?”
“We didn’t go ashore.”
“Well, that’s like you, Frank.”
