that all right, Lemmy," Zenas Henry drawled. "You can generally depend on a pretty girl to raise a rumpus. Give her a month in town an' she'll most likely have all the male population cuttin' one another's throats."

Fortunately both Marcia and Sylvia were at the moment too far out of ear-shot for this menacing prediction to reach them. Cut off by curtains of fog and a tide that foamed through the channel, they were standing in the homestead kitchen.

The builder of it would have laughed to scorn the present day apology for an interior so delightful.

[47]

[47]

Here was a room boasting space enough for an old-fashioned brick oven; an oil stove; two sand-scrubbed tables, snow white and smooth as satin; a high-backed rocker cushioned in red calico; braided rugs and shelves for plants. A regal kitchen truly—one that bespoke both comfort and hospitality.

The copper tea kettle, singing softly and sending up a genial spiral of steam, gleamed bright as sunshine; and the two big pantries, through which one glimpsed rows of shining tins and papered shelves laden with china, contributed to the general atmosphere of homeliness.

Fog might shroud the outer world in its blanket of unreality, but it was powerless to banish from Marcia's kitchen the cheer which perpetually reigned there.

Before the fire, stretched upon his side, lay Prince Hal, his body relaxed, his eyes drowsy with sleep; while from her vantage-ground on the rocking-chair above, the tiger kitten, Winkie-Wee, gazed watchfully down upon his slumbers.

It was Sylvia, however, who, in a smock of flowered chintz, lent the room its supreme touch of color. She looked as if all the blossoms in all the world had suddenly burst into bloom and twined themselves about her slender body.

Out of their midst rose her head, golden with curls and her blue eyes, large and child-like.

[48]

[48]

With her coming, a new world had opened to Marcia.

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