island passed noisily overhead, and Lucy watched it wistfully, as it flew off toward Sandy Hook through the clear sky, with that mysterious longing to share in great adventures that sometimes stirs every normal fourteen-year-old heart. At last she gave a sigh and came down to earth, having bumped rather hard into some of the bushes by the General's gate-post, and made that gentleman smile curiously at her as he came out of his door. "I'll go home and see how Marian is," she said, forgetting her puzzled thoughts and starting to run. "I guess that's all I'm good for." Back at the house, Lucy found the piazza deserted and went inside and out to the kitchen, where the cook, who was Elizabeth's husband, Karl, told her that Mrs. Gordon had gone to take some jelly to Sergeant Cameron's wife, who had been ill several days. P 33 P 33 "The little sick girl is up-stairs, I think, Miss Lucy. She not go with your mother, I know." Lucy ran up-stairs and through her own room into Marian's. "Oh, here you are," she panted, breathless. "I've been wondering where you were. Aren't you coming out to parade?" "Yes, I'm getting dressed now," said Marian, who was tying her curls with a blue ribbon as she stood before the glass in her petticoat. "Will you button my dress for me, Lucy? I was waiting for Elizabeth to come down from her room." "Of course I will," said Lucy, taking the fine white frock laid on the bed and slipping it carefully over Marian's thin little shoulders. "Oh, Marian, you do look lovely!" she could not help exclaiming when she had finished the row of tiny buttons. "What a perfectly darling dress that is." "Oh, no," said Marian, laughing at her cousin's burst of enthusiasm, for she was too used to having numberless pretty clothes, which her father bought to coax her into an interest in going about, to think much of them. But Lucy, wandering over to the closet where a dozen more dresses hung, suddenly became painfully aware of her own mussed-looking middy blouse and skirt, and of the hair blown about her face. P 34 P 34 "I'll get dressed myself in a jiffy, Marian," she said, darting into her own room, where she performed the sometimes neglected function of dressing for the afternoon with more than usual care. When she came out ten
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