“Can you tell us ’bout things, mother?” asked Ethelwyn.  “P’raps we could help some.”

“Yes, I am going to, but not now, for the porter wishes to make up our beds.”

“There are stickers in my eyes,” said Beth, yawning.  “There’s one more question I’d like to know about though,” she said as they moved across the aisle.  “If God can’t make mistakes, why does He let it be so easy for folks to?”

“That I don’t just know,” said her mother, “but it’s a good sign when we know they are mistakes.”

It was only a short time after this that they were all asleep in their curtained beds, and while it was still dark, and the children were too sleepy to realize much about it, they reached their destination and were driven to the seashore, cottage where they were to spend the summer.

CHAPTER II At the Shore

    Underneath the washing waves
      The requiem of the sea,
    For those whose hopes are buried there,
      Is tolling ceaselessly.

It was interesting to go to sleep in a Pullman car, and to wake up in a dainty room hung with rosebud chintz draperies, and with an altogether delightful air of coziness about it.

But there was something outside their room that, like a magnet, drew them out of bed.  They climbed on chairs, and gazed eagerly out of the windows.

The house they were in, was on a hill.  Pine trees grew near, and there below them and very near, was the great silvery blue sea, with the sunshine flashing on its tossing waves?  The children gasped with delight.

“It’s another door to Paradise,” said Ethelwyn.

“The gold place that shows where the sun sets is another one,” said Elizabeth.  Then they heard their mother, who had come in quietly, and in a moment was cuddling them up in her arms.

“We’ve lost a lot of time, I’m afraid,” said Ethelwyn after they had given her a bear hug and a kiss.

“That ocean is the prettiest thing, mother.  P’raps that’s the way to Paradise where father and grandfather and brother have gone.”

“Yes,” said their mother, helping them into their clothes.  “It is one of the ways.”

“Tell us about this place, please,” begged Ethelwyn, “and how we happened to come to such a de-lic-ious place.  Will you have to work so hard, motherdy, here?  And will the little lines come between your eyes?” Whereupon Elizabeth at once abandoned to their fate, her harness garters with their many buckles, and climbed up to see.  Yes, the lines had gone, and she kissed the place to make sure before she climbed down again.

“Hoty potys is the twissedest things,” she remarked, worse tangled than ever.

“Hose supporters, dear child,” corrected Ethelwyn with the exasperating air that always roused Beth’s wrath.

“This cottage,” mother hastened to say, while she untangled the buckles with one hand and buttoned Ethelwyn’s waist with the other, “belongs to Mrs. Stevens and her daughter, Dorothy.  I have known them for years.  Recently they wrote asking me to bring you children and come to them for the summer; they, too, were lonely, and they knew that I needed rest, quiet, and time to plan for the future.  There are few people living here but fisher folk—­”