Then the young man laughed and laughed, until he became aware of Elizabeth wistfully staring at him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“My dolls.  They’re baptized clear to the bottom; please get ’em out.”

“I’ll do it, if you will take this note to Miss Dorothy Stevens,” said the young man, at once throwing off his coat and pushing up his shirt sleeve.  Beth, before she trotted off, saw that he had a blue anchor on his arm.  When she came back, the rescued five lay stretched on the grass in a pathetic row, and she at once ran to her prostrate children.

“You are to go to the parlor and tell Miss Dorothy all about it,” she said, in passing, to their rescuer.  “Your note made Miss Dorothy cry; and she was all white ’round her mouth.  Thank you for the dolls,” she called as an afterthought.

So busy was she drying her afflicted family that it was some time after the others had reached home that ’Vada, wildly excited, came to find Elizabeth and to tell her that Miss Dorothy’s sweetheart had come back.

“From Paradise?” queried Beth, getting up at once and bristling all over with questions she wanted to ask him about that interesting place.

“Mighty nigh,” said ’Vada, rolling her eyes.  “He was shipwrecked on the raging main, and hit on de head wid somefin that done knock all de sense out of him, so he’s pick up by some folks dat didn’t know ‘im, an’ he went cruisin’ aroun’, till he come to, and, by ’me by, back to see his sweetheart.”

Elizabeth went into the parlor later on, and stared so insistently at the young captain that her mother drew her gently to one side and whispered to her.

“But I’m anxious to see a sweetheart that has been in Paradise, mother,” she explained.

CHAPTER IV The Wedding

      Bells ring,
      Birds sing,
    Every one is gay;
      Hearts beat,
      Chimes sweet,
    On a bridal day.

It was one of the things for the children to remember always, that Miss Dorothy was married while they were there to help.

They helped so much in the matter of scraping all the cake and icing pans, stoning, and especially eating, raisins, that it was a wonder they were not ill.

The morning on which the wedding was to take place dawned as bright and golden as could be desired.

It was a very simple, pretty wedding in the stone chapel, towards which, in the early morning, the bridal party walked.  Nan, Ethelwyn, and Elizabeth went ahead, bearing flowers, and after them came Miss Dorothy in her white gown, clinging to the arm of her sailor lover.

Mrs. Stevens and the children’s mother, together with a few friends, awaited them in the pretty church, and Nan’s father married them.  They then all went to the bride’s home for breakfast, immediately after which, the young couple were going away for a year.  This fact, and the mother’s sad face impaired the appetites of the guests, with three noble exceptions.  The trio at the end of the table ate with zest and unimpaired enthusiasm, of the good things that they fondly believed might never have reached their present point of perfection had it not been for their skill.