"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_