think that if you knew how grateful I am for my beautiful summer,
dear Dr. Paul and Aunt Truth, you would be glad that you gave it to
me, and I love you all, dearly, dearly, dearly!' Whereupon the
impulsive little creature finished her maiden speech by dashing round
the table and giving Mrs. Winship one of her 'bear hugs,' at which
everybody laughed and rose from the table.

Laura Burton, who was thoroughly out of conceit with the world, and
who was never quite happy when other people seemed for the moment to
be preferred to herself, thought this burst of affection decidedly
theatrical, but she did not know of any one to whom she could confine
her opinions just then; indeed, she felt too depressed and out of
sorts to join in the general hilarity.

Dinner being over, Dr. Paul and the boys took the children and
sauntered up the canyon for a lazy afternoon with their books. Elsie
went to sleep in the new hammock that the doctor had hung in the
sycamores back of the girls' sleeping-tent, and Mrs. Winship lay down
for her afternoon nap. Pancho saddled the horses for Bell and
Margery, who went for a gallop. Polly climbed into the sky-parlour
to write a long letter to her mother, and Laura was left to solitude
in the sleeping-tent. Now everybody knows that a tent at midday is
not a particularly pleasant spot, and after many a groan at the glare
of the sun, which could not be tempered by any system of shawls, and
moans at the gopher-holes which she discovered while searching for
her ear-ring, and repeated consultations with the hand-glass at brief
intervals, during which she convinced herself that she looked worse
every minute,--she finally discovered a series of alarming new spots
on her neck and chin. She felt then that camping out was a complete
failure, and that she would be taken home forthwith if it could be