"Oh, mamma, don't speak so!" cried Gertrude, almost ready to cry; for she admired her mother as well as loved her, and was cravingly desirous to win her good opinion. "Please don't think I meant to be rude. It really and truly was a joke."

"My dear, you meant a little more by it than that," replied Mrs. Gray, fixing her soft, penetrating look on Gertrude's face. "You haven't begun quite rightly with Candace. I have noticed it, and have been sorry,—sorry for you even more than for her. She is an affectionate, true-hearted girl. You can make a good friend of her if you will; and you can be of use to her and she to you."

"Now, what did mamma mean by that?" thought Gertrude, after she had gone upstairs. "I can't, for the life of me, see what use Cannie could be to me. I might to her, perhaps, if I wanted to."

The "Manual of Perfect Gentility" was destined to excite more attention than its donor had intended, in more ways than one. Candace and Marian fell to reading it, and found its contents so amusing that they carried it to the morning-room, where Georgie was taking a lesson in china-painting from her mother, who was very clever at all the minor art accomplishments. Gertrude came in at the same time, in search of some crewels to match an embroidery pattern; so they were all together.

"Mamma, mamma, please listen to this!" cried Marian, and she read:—

"'Directions for entering the room at an evening party.—Fix your eye on the lady of the house on entering, and advance toward her with outstretched hand, looking neither to the right nor to the left, until you have interchanged the ordinary salutations of the occasion. When this is done, turn aside and mingle with the other guests.'

Now, mamma, just imagine it,—marching in with your hand out and your eye fixed!" And Marian, relinquishing the Manual to Cannie, flew to the door, and entered in the manner prescribed, with her eyes set in a stony glare on her mother's face, and her hand held before her as stiffly as if it had been a shingle. No one could help laughing.

"I don't think the hand and the glare are necessary," said Mrs. Gray; "but it is certainly quite proper to speak to the lady of the house, when you come in, before you begin to talk to other people."

"Here's another," cried Marian, hardly waiting till her mother had done speaking. "Just listen to these—

"'Directions for a horseback ride. Mounting.—The lady should stand on the left side of the horse, with her right hand on the pommel of her saddle, and rest her left foot lightly on the shoulder of her gentleman attendant, who bends before her. When this is done, the gentleman will slowly raise himself to the perpendicular position, and in doing so lift the lady without difficulty to the level of her seat.'"

"My gracious! suppose he didn't," remarked Georgie, looking up from her painting. "There she would be, standing on his shoulder, on one foot! Imagine it, on the Avenue!" And the four girls united in a peal of laughter.

"But there is something here that I really want to know about," said Candace. "May I read it to you, Cousin Kate? It's in a chapter called 'Correspondence.'"

"Oh, my!" cried Marian, who still held fast to one side of the Manual. "It tells how to refuse gentlemen when they offer themselves to you. Here it all is. You must say,—

"'SIR,—I regret extremely if anything in my manner has led to a misapprehension of my true feelings. I do not experience for you the affection which alone can make the marriage relation a happy one; so I—'"

"No, no," interrupted Candace, blushing very pink, and pulling the book away from Marian; "that isn't at all what I wanted to ask you about, Cousin Kate. It was—"

"Oh, then perhaps you meant to accept him," went on the incorrigible Marian, again getting possession of one side of the "Manual of Gentility." "Here you are:—

"'DEAR FRIEND,—Your letter has made me truly happy, breathing, as it does, expressions of deep and heartfelt affection, of which I have long felt the corresponding sentiments. I shall be happy to receive you in my home as an accepted suitor, and I—'"

"Cousin Kate, make her stop—isn't she too bad?" said Cannie, vainly struggling for the possession of the book.

"'And I'—let me see, where was I when you interrupted?" went on Marian. "Oh, yes, here—

"'And I am sure that my parents will give their hearty consent to our union. Receive my thanks for your assurances, and believe—'"

But Candace had again got hold of the volume, and no one ever learned the end of the letter, or what the lover of this obliging lady was to "believe."

"This is what I wanted to ask you about, Cousin Kate," said Candace, when quiet was restored. "The book says:—

"'The signature of a letter should depend upon the degree of familiarity existing between the writer and the person addressed. For instance, in writing to a perfect stranger a lady would naturally use the form,—

Yours truly, Mrs. A. M. Cotterell.'"

"Oh! oh!" interrupted Georgie. "Fancy any one signing herself 'Yours truly, Mrs. A. M. Cotterell.' It's awfully vulgar, isn't it mamma?"

"That is a very old-fashioned book," observed Mrs. Gray; "still I don't think, even at the time when it was published, that well-bred people used a signature like that. It may not be 'awfully vulgar,' but it certainly is not correct; nothing but the Christian name should ever be used as a signature."

"But suppose the person you were writing to did not know whether you were married or not," said Candace.

"Then you can add your address below, like this;" and she wrote on the edge of her drawing-paper,—

"Yours truly, "CATHERINE V. GRAY. "MRS. COURTENAY GRAY, "Newport, R. I.

That is what I should do if I were writing to a stranger."

"Then there is this about the addresses of letters," went on Candace:—

"'In addressing a married lady, use her maiden as well as her married name; for example, in writing to Miss Sarah J. Beebe, who is married to George Gordon, the proper direction would be

Mrs. Sarah B. Gordon, Care of George Gordon, Oshkosh, Michigan.'

Is that right, Cousin Kate?"

"No; that is decidedly wrong. When Miss Beebe married, she became not only Mrs. Gordon, but Mrs. George Gordon, to distinguish her from any other Mrs. Gordons who might happen to exist. She should sign herself 'Sarah B. Gordon,' but her letters and cards should bear her married name, 'Mrs. George Gordon.'"

"But people do write to widows in that way, don't they?" asked Gertrude. "I recollect, when I went to the post-office with Berry Joy one day, there was a letter for her mother, directed to Mrs. Louisa Bailey Joy."

"Yes; people do, but not the people who know the right way," her mother replied dryly. "A man's Christian name doesn't die with him any more than his surname. I often see letters addressed to Mrs. Jane this and Mrs. Maria that, but it never seems to me either correct or elegant. It is a purely American custom. English people have never adopted it, and it seems very odd to them."

"Well, about cards," continued Marian, who was turning over the leaves of the "Manual of Gentility." "See what a funny little card this is; and the writer of the book says it is the kind we ought to have." She pointed to a page on which appeared a little oblong enclosure bearing the name

Fannie C. Jones.

"That isn't nice a bit, is it, mamma?"

"No, I confess that it does not look to me at all right. Girls old enough to need cards are old enough to have 'handles to their names.' If I were that young woman I should spell 'Fanny' without the ie, and call myself 'Miss Frances C. Jones' on my card, and keep my pet name for the use of my friends, and not print it."

"I think I've learned a good deal to-day," said Candace. "The funny old book isn't right in what it says, but Cousin Kate knows; so it comes to the same thing in the end. I'm glad you gave it to me, Gertrude."

Gertrude had the grace to feel ashamed, as she saw Candace's perfect freedom from shame.

"Oh, dear! how much there is to learn!" continued Candace, with a sigh. She was still deep in the "Ladies' Manual of Perfect Gentility."

"Put away that book, Cannie," said her cousin; "or give it to me, and I will hide it where Gertrude shall not find it again. Good breeding can be learned without printed rules."

"Can it, mamma?"

"Yes; for, as I was saying this morning to Gertrude, good manners are the result of good feeling. If we really care about other people, and want to make them happy, and think of them and not of ourselves, we shall instinctively do what will seem pleasant to them, and avoid doing what is disagreeable. We shall refrain from interrupting them when they are speaking. We shall not half listen to what they say, while our eyes are roving about the room, and our attention wandering to other things. We shall be quick to notice if they want anything that we can get for them. We shall not answer at random, or giggle, or say the wrong thing. We shall not loll back in our chairs, as Georgie is doing at this moment, with one foot cocked over the other knee, and a paint-brush in our mouths."

"Mamma!" And Georgie hastily recovered the upright position, and took her paint-brush from between her lips.

"We shall not drum idly on window-panes, as Gertrude was doing just now, for fear that the little noise will be disagreeable to our neighbors."

"Now, mamma!"

"We shall not walk carelessly between any one and the fire, because we shall be afraid of making them cold; nor shall we upset a work-basket while doing so, as Marian upset mine just now."

"Mamma, I do believe you are giving us all a scolding; I shall just stop you." And Marian flung her arms round her mother's neck, and gave her half a dozen enormous kisses.

"We shall consider a kiss as a favor," went on Mrs. Gray, inexorably, holding Marian off at arm's length, "not a punishment to be inflicted whenever we happen to feel like it. We shall never trot one foot when we are nervous, and shake the table."

"Cannie, that's you. I thought it would be your turn soon," said Marian.

"Oh! did I trot?" said Cannie. "Please excuse me, Cousin Kate. I have such a bad habit of doing that. Aunt Myra says it's my safety-valve."

"If it's a safety-valve, it's all very well," replied her cousin. "I didn't know. In short, my dears, as the poet says,—

'Manners are not idle, but the fruit Of noble nature and of lofty mind.'

The instinct of self-control, of gentleness, of consideration and forethought and quick sympathy, which go to make up what we call good breeding; the absence of noise and hurry, the thousand and one little ways by which we can please people, or avoid displeasing them,—are all taught us by our own hearts. Good manners are the fine flower of civilization. And everybody can have them. I always say that one of the best-bred men of my acquaintance is Mr. Jarvis, the mason. I have known him come up out of a cistern to speak to me, dressed in overalls and a flannel shirt; and his bow and his manner and the politeness of his address would have done credit to any gentleman in the world."

"Mamma, how funny you are," said Georgie, wonderingly; but Gertrude caught her mother's meaning more clearly.

"I rather like it," she said slowly. "It sounds like something in a poem or a storybook, and it would be nice if everybody felt like that, but people don't. I've heard Mrs. Joy speak quite rudely to Mr. Jarvis, mamma."

"Very likely. I never have considered Mrs. Joy as a model of manners," replied Mrs. Gray, coolly. "And that reminds me to say just one other word about good breeding toward servants and people who work for us, or are poor and need our help. Gentleness and politeness are even more important with them than they are with other people."

"Why more, mamma?"

"Because their lives are harder than ours, and we owe them all the little help that courtesy can give. Because, too, we are their models, consciously or unconsciously, and if we are polite to them they will in return be polite to us. And besides, they meet us at a disadvantage. If a servant 'answers back,' she is called impertinent and discharged; but I should think it must be rather hard not to answer back to some mistresses."

"Is that why you are always so very polite to Jane?" asked Gertrude. Jane was the cook.

"Yes, partly that; and partly because I want Jane to be very polite to me; and she always is."

"There is the sun at last, I do declare," cried Marian, springing up. "Hurrah! I should think it was time. Now we shall have some nice weather, Cannie. Newport is lovely after a fog. It looks so nicely washed, and so green. Mamma, couldn't we have a long drive this afternoon in the wagonette, across the beaches and way round by the windmill? I like that drive so much."

"Yes; and at dinner we will eat Cannie's health in her birthday cake. It is making now, and Jane has the seventeen little pink candles all ready. How the fog is rolling away! It will be a charming afternoon."



CHAPTER V.

DOWN TO BEAVER TAIL.

SUNDAY morning brought the fresh, lovely stillness which Sundays in early summer seem always to possess in Newport. Later in the season the roll of wheels and the jingle of plated harnesses come to mar this peacefulness; but till the very end of June it endures, and is one of the sweet things of the place.

The Joys were at breakfast. It was one of the points in which Mrs. Joy took most pride, that this meal was served in a special apartment known as the breakfast-room, and not, as with most families, in the room where they dined. The breakfast-room was not large, but sumptuous in all its appointments. A critical taste might have objected that the plush curtains which shaded the windows were too heavy for summer; that the begilded wallpaper "swore" a little at its own dado and frieze, as well as deadened the effect of the pictures which hung against it; and that the drapery of lace and velvet which veiled the fireplace made a fire inconvenient and almost impossible, however cold the weather might be. But a critical taste might have found the same faults with the whole house. The general effect was of costliness and magnificence; but the details were at variance, and comfort and homelikeness had been sacrificed in the effort to make everything fine. There was a library, with almost no books in it; a ball-room, which was used only for balls, and looked bare and shut up on ordinary days; a huge drawing-room, full of costly toys,—tables loaded with Sevres cups, other tables with processions of pug-dogs in precious china, snuff-boxes, patch-boxes; chimney-piece crowded with porcelain figures and bits of old Dresden ware; there was a great deal of carving and or-moulu,—but it all had the air of being created and kept for company use, and deserted the moment company went away. Mrs. Joy had only got so far in her art education as this, that she bought everything which cost a great deal of money and which her neighbors bought, and she never stopped to reason about such minor points as taste, fitness, convenience, or the adaptation of an article to her own particular needs.

Mrs. Joy was the very image of a prosperous woman, as she sat behind her heavy silver coffee-pots and cream-jugs, reading the Sunday paper, to get which her groom had ridden a couple of miles before breakfast. Her very black hair was trained into a line of formal rings across her forehead, which as yet scarcely showed a wrinkle. Her tightly laced figure was almost as slender as her daughter's; and the hand sparkling with diamonds, which held the paper, was white and youthful. Handsome she certainly was; and people called her agreeable, for she talked a great deal, in a noisy, lively way, and had a caressing manner for all persons whom she thought it worth her while to caress. But her face was hard; and when the society smile died out of it, it was neither intelligent nor kindly. Mrs. Joy had been extremely pretty in her youth. Berenice was like her; but Tom Joy the son resembled his father, who had died three or four years before the opening of this little story.

Berry and her friend Ethel Curtis were talking about a sailing party which they had planned for the next day.

"The Grays and the Halletts, and Julia Prime, that makes seven; mamma for matron, eight; then there's Tom and George Rivington, and the two Fosters. I can't think where we are to get the other three men."

"It isn't like a dinner party. The numbers need not be exactly equal," suggested Ethel.

"That's true, but it's a great deal better fun to have them equal. Men hate to talk to two girls at once, and the girls who haven't any men to talk to feel left out. Carrol Benton is coming up the end of the week; I wish he were here now."

"I guess you'd better look up some other matron, and let me off," said Mrs. Joy, laying down her newspaper. "I don't care much for sailing. I'm so apt to feel a little sick, and that spoils all the pleasure of it. Ask Mrs. Freddy Allen; she is young, and likes to go everywhere, and Freddy will go along and make another gentleman."

"That will do nicely if you really don't want to go, mamma. We'll invite them all as we come out of church, and save the bother of writing notes. It's easier to explain when you see people than to write down everything."

"Yes, that's one of the conveniences of going to church," remarked Mrs. Joy, calmly. "I've often had as many as three or four invitations, coming out of Trinity on a Sunday morning in the season. These muffins are horrid. James, tell the cook she ought to be ashamed of herself to send up such things. They're as tough as leather, and burned besides—as black as my shoe, I do declare."

"Yes, 'm."

And James departed to incense the cook with the unsoftened message. The cook declared that when ladies came down an hour late for breakfast, they must expect tough muffins; and for her part she didn't care whether they were good or not; she didn't think much of the place anyway, and didn't mean to stay on. There'd be plenty of people coming in a week or two, and plenty of places to pick and choose from. Mrs. Joy was always having little difficulties with her servants.

Trinity Church looked cool and shady, as the party entered it from the dazzle of the outer sunshine. Berenice Joy was perfectly well-trained in the outward forms of devotion. She called herself "High Church;" and nothing could be more graceful than the manner in which she glided up the aisle, bowed to the chancel, and sank on her knees, for what was supposed to be a short interval of silent prayer. But her eyes went straight to the Grays' pew the moment she rose, and from thence to the Halletts', and she whispered to Ethel, "They're all here. That's nice." Then she indulged in a long stare at Candace, who had come to church with her cousins, and who, in her new cream-and-brown foulard, with the daisy-trimmed hat, and a pair of the birthday gloves on her slender hands, looked quite differently from the ill-dressed little passenger of the "Eolus" the Monday before.

"Do look! That's the very girl we saw on the boat," went on Berenice, in the same low whisper. "Did you ever! Hasn't Mrs. Gray done her over nicely? I wonder where she got that hat?"

"I wonder what she has done with the old one?"

"Given it to the cook, or sold it to the rag-and-bottle man," retorted Berry. Then came a suppressed giggle, which ended in sudden, forced gravity as the opening words of the service fell on their ears, and they rose with the rest of the congregation.

Candace was not conscious that she was being looked at. She had only once or twice in her life been in an Episcopal church, and never before in an old one. Trinity seemed to her as wonderful and picturesque as some of the churches she had read about in books. She looked at the square pews where people sat sideways, instead of fronting the chancel as in ordinary churches. She noted the tall wands with gilded tops, which marked the places of the junior and senior wardens; the quaint, swinging chandeliers of old brass; the tablets on the walls, two or three bearing inscriptions in honor of dead rectors or other departed worthies, one to the memory of a young girl, with a beautiful flying figure in bas-relief, carved in white marble. She gazed with amazement at the pulpit,—one of the ancient "three-decker" pattern, which is rarely seen now-a-days, with a clerk's desk below, a reading-desk above, above that a lofty pulpit for the clergyman, to which a narrow flight of stairs gave access, and suspended over all an enormous extinguisher-shaped sounding-board. It looked large and heavy enough to crush any clergyman who should be caught by its fall while in act of preaching; and Candace watched its slight oscillations with an apprehensive fascination, till she recollected that it must have hung there for a hundred years at least, so there was no reason to suppose that it would drop on this particular Sunday.

By turning her head a very little she could get a glimpse of the organ-loft, with its quaint little organ bearing two gilded mitres and a royal crown on top, and below, the inscription, "The Gift of George Berkeley, late Lord Bishop of Cloyne." She wondered who George Berkeley could have been, and resolved to ask Cousin Kate as they went home if there was any story about him.

There was no whispering or giggling in Mrs. Gray's pew. The girls were too well trained for such irreverence; and except that Georgie interchanged one little smile with Berry Joy as she came in, not one of them looked away from the clergyman till the sermon was over and the benediction pronounced. It had been an impressive service to Candace, who was used to the barer forms of the Congregational church; and she was surprised to perceive how little solemnizing effect it seemed to have on the congregation in general.

The moment people rose from their knees, a low buzz of conversation began. Berry Joy seized on Georgie and Gertrude, and began to unfold the sailing plan as they walked down the aisle. Mrs. Joy took possession of Cousin Kate. Everybody seemed to have something to say to somebody. Candace caught scraps of half-a-dozen different conversations before she reached the door, and not one of them related in any way to the sermon or to anything religious. She overheard one invitation to dinner, another to drive, an inquiry about a dressmaker, a bit of gossip about a new engagement, a request for a recipe for mayonnaise. She supposed it must be the right thing to chatter thus, since all these delightful-looking people did it; still it seemed to her country notions rather queer.

The carriage was waiting in Spring Street, a little farther up the hill. She did not like to get in till the others were ready, so she stepped aside among the gravestones, and looked up to where the white, slender spire of the old church towered against the blue. She was trying to make out the Episcopal mitre surmounted by the gilded weather-vane, when Mrs. Gray saw and beckoned to her.

She was still talking with Mrs. Joy, and that lady was saying, "I may possibly not be able to go myself, but if I am prevented I will see that the young folks have a proper matron. And then, my dear, there's Captain Davis, you know. I never let Berry sail with any one else. He's so safe and so careful, and the weather promises to be perfect."

"It certainly is perfect to-day," said Mrs. Gray. "Candace dear, I want to introduce you to Mrs. Joy. My cousin, Miss Arden, Mrs. Joy; or rather my niece, for her mother was like my own sister. She has come to spend the summer with me. Cannie, Mrs. Joy is the mother of the young lady who came down with you in the 'Eolus.'"

"Ah, indeed, the girls did not tell me about that," said Mrs. Joy. "Well, my dear,"—Mrs. Joy would have said "my dear" to Queen Victoria or the Empress of China, if she had ever had the chance of an interview with those potentates,—"you've come to a charming place and to charming relatives, I'm sure, and you can't fail to enjoy your summer. You must come with your cousins to-morrow to this sailing-party which my young folks are getting up. They'll be delighted, I'm sure."

"Thank you," said Candace, timidly, glancing at Mrs. Gray.

"That will be very nice," said her cousin. "Cannie has not been on the water yet. It is a new pleasure for her. At four o'clock, you said, Mrs. Joy?"

"Yes, dear, at four. And don't trouble to send down for the girls. It's impossible to tell exactly when they will get in, as it depends on the wind, and Berry will have the beach-wagon, and can bring them all up as well as not. Good-by, dear." And Mrs. Joy sailed toward her carriage, where the two girls were already seated.

"I've asked that Miss Arden who's staying with the Grays to go out sailing with you to-morrow," she said, as she took her seat. "You'll want another gentleman, Berry."

"Oh, mamma, what did you do that for? She's the pokiest little thing. We didn't want her at all."

"Well, Mrs. Gray introduced her, and said she was almost her niece, and I thought it seemed to be expected. Mrs. Gray is always polite to our visitors, you know, and I don't like to seem to slight any of hers. What's the matter with the girl?"

"Oh, nothing's the matter, only she's poky, and doesn't seem to fit in somehow. You would understand if you had seen her the day she came. Mrs. Gray has dressed her up, as you might be sure she would; but then she looked like the backwoods, didn't she, Ethel?"

"She seemed nice-appearing enough to-day. You'll have to make the best you can of it, I guess; for Mrs. Gray accepted for her."

"It doesn't really signify," said Berry, discontentedly; "only it throws the party all out of shape. And she's younger than any of the rest, only just seventeen, Georgie says. She'd a great deal better stay at home with Marian."

It was fortunate that Candace did not guess how unwelcome her company was to the getters-up of the party, for the idea of the sail was most delightful to her. She had never been out in a boat in her life, not even on the smallest pond; and she had just discovered the strong fascination of the sea. She longed to get nearer to it, to know it better; and in her innocent little heart she thought, "How very kind it was in Mrs. Joy to invite me."

Sunday was always a particularly pleasant day at the Grays'. Mrs. Gray was wont to declare that though she did not believe in the Jewish Sabbath, she did with all her heart believe in the Christian day of rest; and she took pains to make it a happy one for all under her roof. She gave her servants as much liberty as she could, simplified their work, and provided a plenty of good reading for such of them as stayed at home. Her own time was much more at the service of her family than it could be on ordinary days. She always took a walk with the girls in the cool of the afternoon, if the day were pleasant, and kept some book of a thoughtful kind to read aloud in the evenings. This Sunday it happened to be that wonderful little prose poem of Mrs. Oliphant's, "A Beleaguered City." Cannie found it absorbingly interesting, and even Mr. Gray laid aside his newspaper and listened to the very end.

The reading done, Candace found a chance to ask her question about George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, the donor of the organ. There was a story about him, as it turned out, and a very interesting one. Mrs. Gray told how, when Dean of Derry in Ireland, the project of establishing a college in Bermuda for the education of English boys and of Indian youths to act as missionaries to their own people, had taken possession of his mind; and he had given up his preferment, and crossed the sea with his family to engage in this chosen work. She described their landing in Newport on a Sunday morning when everybody was at church, and how the clergyman stopped in the middle of his sermon, and with all his congregation following him, hurried down to the water-side to receive the distinguished guest. She promised to take Candace out some day to see Whitehall,—the house which he built on the island, and in which he lived for some years, till the impossibility of carrying out his scheme for Bermuda drove him back again to Ireland; and also the rocky shelf still called "Bishop Berkeley's Rock," where he is said to have composed the lines which begin

"Westward the course of empire takes its way."

Then she looked up a photograph from Smibert's picture of Dean Berkeley and his family to show them, and by that time the girls had all grown interested; and when Marian said that she, too, wanted to go to see Whitehall, Georgie and Gertrude begged to be included also, and Mrs. Gray promised to take them all.

"One of the Dean's little children is buried in Trinity churchyard, Cannie," she ended; "you can look up the stone some day. It has 'Lucia Berkeley' carved upon it."

"I should like to," said Cannie. "It has been so nice to hear about him. How many interesting things have happened in Newport! I shall care a great deal more about that funny little organ, next Sunday."

* * * * *

Newport Harbor shone all blue and silver in the sun, as the party stepped on board the cat-boat "Cornelia" at sharp four on Monday afternoon. Mrs. Fred Allen, a tall, graceful brunette, seemed as much of a girl as any of the party which she was nominally to "matronize;" but "she was married though she didn't look it," as Berry Joy remarked, and so was qualified to fill the place. There was a fair wind, which sent the boat smoothly along with little or no motion as they glided past the long sunken shoal off the end of Goat Island, and opened the view of Brenton's Cove, with the wreck of the old slaver lying in the deep shadow under one bank, opposite the ribs of the other stranded bark; while from beyond in the laughing bay, white-winged boats flitted to and fro, and seemed to beckon and make tempting signals to the poor defeated barks who might never sail or enjoy the sea again. Candace ventured to ask Gertrude in a whisper, "What are those?"

"Oh, only some old wrecks," replied Gertrude, carelessly; and she turned from Candace to talk to Tom Joy, who sat next to her.

The "Cornelia" was now running on the favoring wind between Fort Adams and the Conanicut shore. On one hand lay Newport, which looked like a dream city in the soft shine of the afternoon; on the other was the long hill line of the island, green with grasses, except where broken now and then by rocky cliffs, and indented with innumerable little coves and inlets,—some ending in strips of pebbly beach, others in stony shelves overhung by sea-weeds. The water was beautiful in color,—here pale flashing green, there purple in the shadow, with gleams of golden light and a low reach of shimmering blue toward the horizon. On sped the boat till they could almost touch the ledges. The rounded outline of the old fortification on the upper hill towered above their heads. Then suddenly she curved and wheeled off on the other tack, with the sharp line of Castle Hill and the Agassiz Point full in view.

Candace gazed with delighted eyes to left and right. Her mind was full of questions, but there seemed no one of whom she could ask them. Georgie and Berry were perched on the extreme point of the bow, with a young man stretched at their feet. Mrs. Fred was on the cabin roof amidships, with quite a little court of girls and young men about her. The couples who sat opposite and beside her seemed quite absorbed in each other. No one had spoken to Candace since the first introductions, and she was too shy to open a conversation with anybody.

"How I wish I knew!" she sighed to herself, half aloud.

Looking up, she met the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the Captain. Perhaps he had caught the words, for he asked encouragingly, "Did you speak, Miss?"

"No," said Candace, "I don't think I spoke. But I was wondering about that—that—thing up there," pointing to the Fort.

"That? That's Fort Dumpling, as folks call it. It is a kind of a queer old place, ain't it? They don't use it now for no war purposes, but it makes a pretty p'int in the landscape, and folks go there for picnics and such in the summer season."

"When was it built?" asked Candace, charmed to find somebody able and willing to satisfy her curiosity.

"Wa'al, I reckon it was about 1812, when we was a-tackling the British for the last time. 'Tain't very much of a fort to look at; but if you was to mount some of them powerful guns they make now on the walls, them and the others over at Fort Adams yonder would protect the channel pretty well. The shot'd reach clear across. Why, you hardly think it perhaps, but not more'n four or five years ago, there was some folks who had come on a kind of an excursion, taking their lunches up there by Fort Dumpling, and some soldiers was firing at a long-range target over there to Fort Adams, and one of the balls came over and hit a young lady."

"How dreadful!" said Candace, her eyes measuring the long distance between the two points. "And it seems so far away. I suppose the young lady felt perfectly safe. I am sure I should have. Did it kill her?"

"Oh, no! they thought at first it had, but it didn't turn out so bad as was expected. The soldiers, they felt mighty mean, I expect. You see, they didn't intend a mite of harm to her or anybody; but it just shows how far them big guns carry now-a-days. A war-ship now, unless she was some kind of a monitor or that, would stand a fair chance of being stove and sent to the bottom before she could get in to attack Newport."

"What a fanny little house that is close down to the water!" remarked Candace, looking off to the opposite shore.

"That's Professor Agassiz's laboratory. Do y' see that kind of a cove which sets in there near by the building, and a little black thing sticking up out of it? That's the pipe of his steam-launch. He and the rest go out in it and dredge for fish and such like, and then they experiment on them inside."

"What do they do that for?" asked Candace.

"Wa'al, they want to find out about 'em, I reckon. I was in there once and saw them at work, but I couldn't make nothing out of it, and there wasn't anybody I could ask."

"Oh, what is that?" cried Candace, as the "Cornelia," tacking again, opened one of the little bays on the south end of Conanicut, where a small steam vessel was lying. Two boats, which seemed to belong to her, were rowing in a parallel line with each other, and behind them appeared a long line of bobbing points which she could not at all understand.

"That's one of the fishing steamers, and the boats are drawing her nets," explained the Captain. "Didn't you ever see a seine drawn before? Wa'al, I declare! I'm mighty glad we happened just in time, for it's a cur'us spectacle. I guess we'll kind of hang about till they get the nets in, and then I'll take the 'Cornelia' up near enough for you to see."

"Captain, there are the seine-boats out," called Tom Joy at the same moment. "Let's sail up and see what they've caught."

The two boats began to near each other as they reached the limits of the long elliptical curves which made their course; and presently a great number of scintillating specks were seen in the space enclosed between them. There were the leaping fish, just conscious that they were crowded into a confined place, and desirous of escape. When they were quite close to one another, the boats turned and began to row for the steamer. The "Cornelia" followed; and the Captain with a twist of the tiller threw her into the wind just beyond the great net, which by that time was being rapidly hauled in.

It was a wonderful thing to see,—the heavy mass of floundering fishes pouring over into the steamer's hold. Thousands and thousands of quivering silvery shapes of all kinds, from the fat, oily-bodied menhaden, to weird horned monsters with gaping mouths, and strange, half-translucent blocks like jelly, which seemed to have no mouths at all. Large and small, pinky white, black, blue,—in they poured. Now and then some fish more lucky than his fellows would splash over the side of the net and escape to liberty and the deep sea; now and then a fisherman with a sudden dash of his hand would single out a specimen choicer than the rest, a blue-fish, a chicken cod, or a sea-bass.

The little company in the sail-boat shared all the excitement of the catch. The young men left their flirtations for the boat's side, where they could get a better view. A great deal of chaff went on between Captain Davis and the captain of the menhaden steamer. Tom Joy amused himself by bargaining for blue-fish, and actually bought three big flapping specimens for a dollar and a quarter. They were deposited on the bottom of the "Cornelia," where they leaped painfully up and down, while the girls retreated for refuge to the upper deck, till Captain Davis at last caught the fish and stowed them away in his little cabin. It was not till the last loop of the seine was emptied, the last fish secured, and the boats were making ready for another cast, that the "Cornelia" finally glided away; and by that time a soft crimson glow had gathered in the west and the sun was nearing the horizon edge. The wind blew more freshly now, and with a zest and coolness which it had not had earlier in the afternoon.

Captain Davis pointed out to Candace the light-ship anchored in the offing between Point Judith and Brenton's Reef, and told her how the men who lived on board of her did not see a face from land for weeks together sometimes, when winds were stormy and waves rough. Candace listened eagerly. The rest of the party had gone back to their old places, but there was not so much chatter now. The dreamy influences of the hour were felt by every one. Dick Foster was quoting Tennyson in a low voice to pretty Julia Prime. Berry Joy and Georgie still kept up a fitful conversation with their cavalier; but Gertrude had grown silent, and Tom Joy was whistling softly to himself, with his eyes fixed on the sunset.

The "Cornelia" sped silently seaward. Suddenly they were in the shadow of a deep cove at the very end of Conanicut; and close by them rose out of the sea an immense square table of rock, over which, still as it was, the surge was constantly flinging showers of white spray. The whole top of this rock was black with large sea-birds. Candace had never imagined such a sight. The birds seemed crowding each other on every inch of space. Each moment some of them would rise, wheel in air with wild cries and screams, and then settle again to dispute for room, while the seething foam splashed over them; and the incessant flutter of their wings, the dashing spray, and the long wash of waves at the base of the rock gave to their place of refuge the effect of movement, so that it seemed to sway and float in the sea.

"Oh, what a wonderful place!" cried Candace. "Such big birds, and so many of them,—what do you call them, Captain?"

"Wa'al, they're mostly cormorants and gulls, I reckon. That's what we call them down to Newport. They ain't no good for eating, so they don't get shot; and they do increase powerfully, though it seems to me I never did see quite so many on the Kettle Bottom before as this afternoon."

"Is that the name of the rock?"

"Yes, the Kettle Bottom Rock; that's what it's called. It's a queer place. There was a painter here last summer, and he made a picter of it, with them birds all flying over it, which folks said was as like as like."

The line of hotels on Narragansett Beach was now plainly in sight. They were almost off Beaver Tail, and the sea was rougher.

"Captain, we may as well put about," said Tom Joy. "The sun's going down, and there's rather more motion hereabouts than the ladies like."

So they put about and sped harborward, helped by the tide which was now running swiftly in. Frank Rivington began to sing in a mellow tenor voice little barcarolles and Venetian boat-songs, which were full of a measured rhythmic movement like oar-strokes and the beat of waves. The pink in the west deepened after the sun went down to a vivid orange red, and flamed higher and higher till the zenith caught the glow; and a little crescent moon, which was climbing up, swung like a tiny silver boat on a crimson tide. It was all like a dream, to which the noiseless speed of the boat offered no interruption.

"Good-night, Captain," said Candace, gently, as the "Cornelia" touched the wharf, at the upper end of which the carriages were waiting for them. "I'm so much obliged to you for telling me all about the things."

"You're welcome, I'm sure," replied the hearty Captain. "It's been nothing but a pleasure so far as I'm concerned. Hope I may take you out sailing again, Miss."

"Oh, I hope so. I think sailing is lovely."

"Good-by, Miss Arden. I hope you have enjoyed it," said Mrs. Allen, as she was borne off by her husband. It was the sole remark addressed by the "matron" of the party to the little stranger under her care during that afternoon; but Candace had not felt neglected.

"Oh, yes; very much, thank you," she replied. Tom Joy, who had waked up to the sense that "the little girl in the red hat" had not had much attention paid her on the sail, tried to get up a conversation as the beach-wagon climbed the hill; but Candace had but little small talk at her command, and they did not get on very fluently.

"I've had a lovely time, Miss Joy," she said shyly, as they were set down at home.

"I'm sure I'm glad. Good-night, Miss Arden." And that was all the notice which Berenice Joy took of her youngest guest, beyond the necessary good-afternoon when they first met on the wharf.

Candace was too unexacting, and too much accustomed to think of herself as a child to whom no particular attention was due, to realize or resent being treated with this scant courtesy. She told Cousin Kate about the sail and the seine steamer, and all the Captain's tales and explanations, with a glow of enjoyment which surprised Gertrude, and perhaps pricked her conscience somewhat; for that night, at hair-brushing time, she surprised Georgie by the observation, "After all, Cannie is quite a sweet little thing."

"So she is, sweet enough; but what makes you think of it just now?"

"Why, we rather left her out this afternoon, I am afraid. Hardly anybody said a word to her, except the Captain. It was rude enough of Berry, for it was her party; but I think it was worse for us. Any other girl would have been hurt and cross, and showed it; but Cannie never seemed to mind a bit, and enjoyed everything, and was just as nice and pleasant as if she had been the belle of the party."

"Well, it was too bad," said Georgie, penitently. "I never thought about it, and I sat ever so far off from her, and Arnold Foster was so funny—in fact, I forgot Cannie. I took it for granted that she was being entertained, somehow."

"I'm afraid both of us find it pretty easy to forget Cannie," remarked Gertrude. "Well, I shall try to do better another time."



CHAPTER VI.

A TALK ABOUT SHYNESS.

"CANNIE," said Mrs. Gray, a few days after the sailing-party, "would you like to study French this summer, with Marian for company?"

"Y-es," replied Cannie; but she said it more because she saw that a yes was expected of her, than because of any real pleasure at the idea. Like most girls who have had scanty or poor teaching, she liked to read a great deal better than she liked to study.

"Do you know any French at all?" continued her cousin.

"No, not any. There wasn't anybody at home who taught it; and if there had been, I don't believe Aunt Myra would have let me learn. She thinks English is a good enough language for anybody. I did study Latin a little while, though. Aunt Myra consented to that, because we had papa's Latin books in the house, and she said they might as well be useful."

"Well, your Latin won't come amiss to your French," said Mrs. Gray, laughing to herself over this thrifty reason for learning a language. "Marian is, of course, far ahead of you in speaking, for she learned it by ear, as they say of music, during the year we spent in France on our way home; but she knows but little of the rules and grammar. I think you will do very well together; for her fluency will tempt you on to talk, and your perseverance will keep her up to the exercises and conjugations, which are sad drudgery, but very needful if you are ever really to know anything of the language. You are persevering, are you not, Cannie?"

"I don't know whether I am or not," replied Candace, inly resolving to justify Cousin Kate's good opinion.

"I have confidence in you," said Mrs. Gray, smiling kindly at her. "And another thing I wanted to say is, that I think both you and Marian will enjoy the summer a great deal better for having one regular study to prepare for. It gives a sort of backbone to your lives, don't you see? Clear fun is like clear honey,—it cloys and loses its charm; but when it is mixed with occupation it keeps its flavor, and you don't get tired of it."

"I can understand that," said Candace, thoughtfully. "I recollect how nice Saturday afternoons used to seem when Aunt Myra had kept me busy darning stockings all the morning. I think I would like the French lessons, Cousin Kate; only I am afraid the teacher will think me very stupid."

Candace's fears were not realized. As a beginner, her first steps were necessarily slow; but she took pains, and had no bad habits or evil accents to unlearn, and after a while she "got hold" of the language and went on more rapidly. Marian's fluent chatter stimulated her to try to talk as fast also, though Mademoiselle Bougereau, their teacher, found a great deal of fault with Marian, and said that many of the phrases which came so glibly out of her mouth partook of the nature of slang, and were not finished or elegant French. Still, with all drawbacks, the little class of two made fair progress; and Candace realized that what Mrs. Gray had said was true, and that all the bits of amusement and pleasure which came in her way were doubly enjoyed by reason of the little "backbone" of real work thus put into her days.

Another pleasure which she and Marian shared in common was a surf-bath before breakfast. Berry Joy had got up an omnibus party of girls, which she called "The Early Dip Club," in which all four of Mrs. Gray's young people were included. Punctually at a quarter before seven on every fair morning the omnibus rattled up the Avenue; and the "Club" set out, under the care of an old experienced maid of Mrs. Joy's, who had nursed Berry, and could be trusted to see that none of the young ladies did anything very imprudent,—such as staying too long in the water or standing about in their wet bathing-dresses. At that early hour there were no loungers to stare at the party. The beach, cleanly swept by the tide of the night before, had scarcely a footprint to mar its smooth, firm sands. There was something delightful in the perfect freshness of the hour and place. Some of the girls had taken lessons in the "School of Natation" in the lower bay, and could swim very well. Candace could not swim, and made no attempt to learn; but she soon acquired the art of floating, under the tuition of Alice Frewen, who, next to Marian and herself, was the youngest of the party, and to whom she had taken a great fancy. The three "children," as Berenice Joy called them, made common cause, and generally kept together, a little apart from the others, holding each other's hands and splashing up and down in the rollers with great enjoyment.

Bathing over, the "Early Dippers" returned home in their omnibus about the time that other people were waking up, bringing with them such cheeks and such appetites as were a satisfaction to their families, and did great credit to the powers of the Newport surf.

So the days sped on. It was full summer-tide now; yet the weather never seemed hot, except perhaps for an hour or two at a time. Morning after morning the sun would rise in a blaze of yellow, which anywhere else would have betokened a scorching day; and just as people had begun to say, "What a sultry morning!" lo, in one moment the wind would set in from the sea, strong, salty, fresh, invigorating; and, behold, it was cool! Or if the afternoon seemed for a little while oppressive in the streets of the old town, it was only necessary to go down to the end of the Avenue to find a temperature cool enough to be called chilly. Nobody ever thought of driving without a shawl, and the shawl was almost always needed. Mrs. Gray was wont to say that Newport had three different climates,—a warm one and a cold one and an in-between one,—and it had them all three every day, and people could take their choice, which was much more convenient than having only one.

The large places on the Cliffs were all open and occupied now. The flower-beds, newly planted when Candace came, made wonderful spaces of color everywhere in the emerald turf. Geraniums seemed as universal as grass, and their splendid reds and pinks were such as are seldom seen anywhere except in Newport. Foliage plants grew into enormous crimson or golden mats, which showed not one break in their luxuriant fulness. In the more ornate places were beds planted to look like Turkish carpets or Indian shawls, the pattern reproduced by hundreds of small plants of carefully adjusted hues, kept closely shaven so as to lie as flat as the objects they simulated. Roses were everywhere; and the soft drifting mists which now and again blew in from the sea, and the constant underlying moisture of the climate kept everything in a state of perfect freshness.

The Casino balls and lawn-tennis matches had begun. Visitors were pouring into the Ocean House; and every day increased the number of carriages, drags, dog-carts, pony phaetons, and village carts, which on all bright afternoons thronged the Avenue from end to end. Dinners and lawn-parties were of frequent occurrence, and during calling-hours the bell seemed always in vibration at the Gray cottage.—"Cottage" I call it; for in Newport everything that is not a "villa" is styled a "cottage," no matter how big or square or uncompromising its appearance may be.

Candace was rather too young to be taken into general society, and she saw much less of these entertainments than Georgie; less even than Gertrude, who, by reason of her intimacy with Georgie's set, was often included in their parties, though not yet formally "out." Mrs. Gray, however, thought it good for Candace to share a little of what was going on; and she took pains to have her invited now and then with the others to lawn-parties, excursions, or afternoon teas. If Mrs. Gray herself was present on these occasions, Cannie did pretty well; for she invariably got behind her cousin or beside her, made no attempt to talk, and just amused herself by watching what went on. But when Mrs. Gray did not go, and she was left to the tender mercies of Georgie and Gertrude, she was apt to feel lonely and unfriended; for with all the better resolutions of these pleasure-loving young people, they still found it "easy to forget Cannie."

"What are you going to do this morning, children?" asked Mrs. Gray, one day at breakfast. "Is the great tennis-match that we have heard so much about to come off, or have I forgotten the date?"

"No, this is the eventful day," replied Gertrude; "and I am so nervous about it that I don't feel as if I could play at all."

"Nonsense! you played beautifully yesterday," said Georgie.

"There wasn't anything depending on me yesterday. It is queer how people never do their best when it is important that they should. I feel as if I were going to be all thumbs this morning."

"Oh, you won't. You'll get excited and forget about the thumbs," remarked Georgie, consolingly. "Mamma, aren't you coming to see us?"

"Yes, I think I shall; and I will bring Cannie with me. She hasn't seen the Casino yet."

Candace had become familiar with the street side of the pretty Casino building, and admired greatly its long facade, with the quaintly shingled curves and balconies, and the low gables, ornamented with disks and half suns in dull gilding,—all looking, Mrs. Gray said, as old as if it had stood there for a couple of centuries, instead of for three or four years only. But the street side, picturesque as it is, had by no means prepared her for what she saw as she followed her cousin through the entrance hall and into the quadrangle beyond.

What did she see? An open space of greenest turf, broken only by two long curving beds of foliage plants and a stone basin from which a fountain threw up a cool jet to refresh the air. On either hand, and on the side from which they had entered, was a line of low buildings, with balconies and grilles of quaintly designed wood-work, windows filled with oddly tinted glass, and at one point a clock tower of rough masonry, over which vines were clustering. Connecting the buildings to right and left, was a raised covered gallery, semi-circular in shape, with a second gallery overhead; and on these ladies in fresh morning toilettes were sitting, some with pieces of embroidery in their hands, others collected in knots for conversation or to listen to the music of the band.

Beyond this gallery lay another and much larger quadrangle, with lines of trees and shrubs to veil its boundaries, on which lawn-tennis was being played in five or six courts at once. At the back of this quadrangle was another long low building, in the same picturesque style as the rest, which, Mrs. Gray explained, contained on one side a charming little theatre which could also be used as a ball-room, and on the other an admirable bowling-alley and racket-court for the use of the members. The band was playing gay music; a hum of conversation filled the air; pretty girls in white or blue or rose color were moving about; the wind drew with delicious coolness through the galleries; altogether it would have been hard to find on a summer morning a prettier place or a livelier scene.

Mrs. Gray was too much of a favorite not to be at once sought out. She was soon the centre of a little group of friends; and Candace sat beside her, silent as usual, but gazing with enchanted eyes at the animated figures on the tennis ground, at the gables and loggias of the restaurant building, at the curious clock-tower, with the heavy iron rings depending above the base, and its top like a bellflower. It was all like a fairy tale to her. Her imagination was actively at work, but no one would have guessed it from her quiet little face; and when Mrs. Gray introduced her to one person and another, she shrank into herself, and after her shy little bow and "How do you do?" relapsed again into stillness, and made no attempt to keep up a conversation. People were kind; but it is always easy to secure solitude in a crowd, and Cannie soon found herself let alone to her heart's content.

Gertrude was playing her best. Her nervousness had disappeared in the excitement of the game, as Georgie had predicted that it would, and some of her strokes were so clever as to win a little volley of applause from the by-standers. Candace did not know the game well enough to appreciate fine points of play, but she could perfectly appreciate the fun of winning; and when Gertrude, flushed and radiant, came to show her mother the prize she had won, a lace pin of gold filigree in the form of a racket, Cannie's face lighted up with a bright sympathy which was pleasant to see. A lady who had been watching her whispered to Mrs. Gray, "What a sweet face that little niece of yours has!"

"So she has," replied Mrs. Gray; "only she is so very timid. She never does herself justice."

"Is it timidity? I had a fancy that she had an unhappy temper, or was troubled about something. Her face has always seemed so sad and overcast till just now, when it lit up at Gertrude's good fortune, and then I caught the true expression."

Mrs. Gray recollected this remark as she drove home with Candace, who, perfectly at ease now that she was alone with her cousin Kate, chattered and laughed like any other girl, and showed herself the happy young thing that she was. At home, even when with Georgie and Gertrude, she was no longer shy; but the moment a stranger came in, all was changed. It was like an evil spell cast by some enchanter. The pleasant smile and simple childish manner vanished, and Cannie became stiff, cold, awkward even; for her discomfort made her feel constrained in every limb and muscle. Her manner grew frigid, because she was frightened and wanted to hide it. If she had to shake hands, she did it without smiling and with downcast eyes; she was too ill at ease to be cordial. People thought that she was out of humor or troubled about something, and set her down as dull and unattractive; and with a natural reaction, Cannie felt that they did not like her, and that made her more uncomfortable than ever.

Mrs. Gray pitied Cannie very much, and had tried various methods to shake her out of her shyness and teach her confidence in herself. None of them so far had done any good. She now began to wonder if her analysis of the case was not wrong; if shyness was not a fault rather than a misfortune, and needed to be disciplined accordingly. She watched Candace for a day or two, and then she made up her mind. "It will be kill or cure," she thought, as she ordered the coupe and proposed to Cannie to take the ocean drive. Marian wanted to go too, and protested that there was plenty of room on the little let-down seat, and that she wouldn't crowd them a bit; but her mother was quite firm, and despatched her on an errand in the other direction without any compunctions.

"I must have Cannie all to myself," she thought.

It was not till they were out of the Avenue and rolling along the smooth road beyond Bailey's Beach, with the fresh-water ponds on one hand and on the other the points and indentations of the coast, that Mrs. Gray led to the subject which was on her mind. The sea was intensely blue that afternoon, with shoots of creamy foam over every rock and ledge, and for a while they talked of nothing but the beauty of the day and the view. Finally Mrs. Gray began,—

"How did you like Mrs. Endicott?"

Mrs. Endicott was one of various visitors who had called that morning. Candace had been sent for, and had been more than usually awkward and unresponsive.

"I liked her pretty well," said Candace. "She didn't talk to me but a little while."

"I know she didn't. It was on her account specially that I sent for you to come down," continued Mrs. Gray. "Did she tell you that she was at school with your mother when they were quite little girls?"

"No!" said Candace, surprised.

"Yes; they were great friends, and she wrote to me before she came up that she was looking forward to seeing you. Shall I tell you why she so soon stopped talking to you? She told me afterward. She said: 'I wanted to talk to your niece about her mother, and to ask her to come to me for a visit; but she looked so frightened and seemed so stiff and shy and hard to get at, that I thought the kindest thing I could do would be to let her alone for the moment, till she was a little more used to me, and to talk to some one else. Next time I come, we shall get on better, I hope.'"

Candace looked much mortified.

"Was I stiff?" she asked. "I didn't know it. I didn't mean to be."

"You are almost always stiff with strangers," said her cousin. "I know you do not mean it, and you are not conscious of the effect of your own manner; but all the same it is stiff. Now, Cannie, will you promise me not to be hurt at what I am going to say?"

"Why, of course I won't," said Cannie, looking at her with trustful eyes.

"Well then, listen! If I didn't know you,—if you were not my own dear little Cannie, whose warm heart I am sure of, and whose good intentions I know all about,—if I met you for the first time and judged of you merely from your manner, as all strangers must judge,—do you know what I should think?"

"What?"

"I should think you rather a cold-hearted girl, who didn't like people and didn't mind letting them know it."

"Oh, Cousin Kate!"

"Or else, if I were more charitably inclined, I should think you a dull girl who did not take much interest in what went on about her."

"Oh, Cousin Kate!"

"Or," continued her cousin, relentlessly, "if I were a real angel, and disposed to make the very best of everybody, I should say to myself, 'The poor thing is so shy that she can't show what she really is.' Unluckily, there are few perfect angels in this world, and a great many of the other sort. And even as a perfect angel, my dear Cannie, I don't think I should consider you exactly agreeable."

"But what can I do?" demanded Candace, looking very unhappy. "I can't make myself not shy."

"No; but you can mend matters by forcing yourself to hide your shyness. I have been meditating on the subject, Cannie, and I have made up my mind that shyness is one form of selfishness."

"Cousin Kate, how can you say that? I thought selfishness was doing what you liked and what is pleasant. I'm sure I don't like to be shy."

"Oh, it's not that kind of selfishness," said Mrs. Gray, smiling. "There is nothing pleasant about shyness; that I am quite ready to admit. But can't you see that it is self-occupation, the being absorbed with your own sensations and feelings, and with trying to imagine what people are thinking about you, that makes you so miserable? If you could forget and occupy yourself with others, this shyness would go. Now, this morning, had you been full of Mrs. Endicott, and what she was like, and what she wanted to talk about, instead of little Candace Arden, and what Mrs. Endicott considered her like, it would all have been different, and much pleasanter for both of you."

"Oh, if I only could," said Candace, with a catch in her voice, "I would give anything I have in the world! I hate to seem so awkward and dull. But you've no idea how uncomfortable I feel, Cousin Kate. The moment I come downstairs and see that roomful of company, my face twitches and my cheeks burn, and I can't think of anything to say, and I keep wishing I could run upstairs again and hide somewhere."

"Yes, because, as I said, your mind is full of yourself. If instead of coming in with this miserable self-consciousness full upon you, you could look upon the roomful as just so many people to whom you owe the little duties of politeness and cordiality, for whom you have the chance to do something kind or pleasant, you would forget your face and your cheeks and the desire to run away. You would be thinking of them, and in thinking of them you would forget to be shy."

Candace did not reply.

"You are a conscientious child," her cousin went on. "I think that you sincerely wish to do what is right, and to make God's rule the rule of your life. And, Candace, in my opinion you should consider it a part of religious duty to try to get rid of this false shame, this bondage to the idea of self, and to learn to live for others instead."

Candace looked up, with the dawn of a new idea in her face.

"How do you mean?" she asked.

"You cannot always run away," continued her cousin. "Big as it is, the world is not big enough to furnish hiding-places for all the people who are afraid to face their fellow-men. And since you cannot run away, your plain duty is to be brave and make the best of it. Now, Cannie, there are two things which may help you to do this, two thoughts which you can keep in mind; and I wish you would try to remember them when you feel a fit of fright or of stiffness coming on."

"What are they?"

"One is, that you are but one little insignificant atom among thousands. People are not thinking about you or noticing you very particularly. You are not of much consequence except to yourself and the few friends who love you. This would be a mortifying fact, if vanity were your trouble; but as it is not, it is a comfortable one. And just as nobody notices you specially, so all the world is not engaged afterward in recollecting all your little mistakes and the stupid things you have said. Unless you have done something very queer, they forget about you as soon as they lose sight of you. I know what miseries sensitive girls undergo in thinking over their foolish speeches and actions, and imagining that every one remembers them as distinctly as they themselves do."

Cannie couldn't help smiling. "Cousin Kate, how can you know about all those things?" she asked.

"Because I was a girl myself once, and as foolish as any of the rest of you; and I have not forgotten how it feels to be a girl," said her cousin, gayly. "That is the use of growing old, Cannie. You can show the way to younger people, and make the road you have walked over a little easier for them.—But to go back to what we were talking about, our own insignificance is one helpful thought, as I said; the other is, that kindliness is one of the Christian virtues, and it is just as much a duty to practise it as it is to be honest and temperate."

Candace drew a long breath.

"It would be perfectly delightful to keep thinking like that always," she said; "the only thing is that I am afraid I should forget when the time came. I wish you could give me an exact rule, Cousin Kate, just what to say and how to act. I would try ever so hard to follow it."

"I know you would," said Mrs. Gray; "but there is no exact rule that I can give, except the Golden one, to do to others just as you would like them to do to you. If you feel stiff, be sure to look cordial. Smile, and shake hands as if you meant it. Try to look interested in what people are saying to you. A good listener helps on conversation as well as a good talker. If you are friendly and warm in your manner, other people will warm to you instinctively. Try it, Cannie, and see if I am not right. And now we will not talk any more about ourselves or our shyness, but drive into the Fort and listen to the music. I caught a strain from the Band just then, and I recollect that this is a 'Fort Day.'"

So in they drove, clattered between walls and embankments, and over a steep paved incline beneath a great arch, and found themselves in an open square, with buildings of solid masonry on all sides, in the midst of which the band was stationed. Other carriages were drawn up to listen to the music, and officers in uniform were coming and going, and talking to the ladies in the carriages. One of these officers, a nice old Major, with a bald spot under his gold-banded cap, knew Mrs. Gray, and came to welcome her. His "girls" were gone over to Newport to a lawn-party, he said; but he insisted on taking Mrs. Gray and Cannie in to see their quarters, which were in a casemate, in close neighborhood to one of the great guns. Here he brewed them a delicious cup of tea; and afterward, at Mrs. Gray's request, he took Candace to see the magazines, and some of the curious underground passages which connect one side of the Fort with the other. Cannie thought these extremely interesting, and like all the caves on desert islands which she had ever read about; for they were narrow, dark, and mysterious, they smelt very close, and all sorts of odd funguses and formations were growing on the roofs overhead.

These adventures chased the worry from her mind and the anxious puckers from her forehead; and she went home quite happily, without recurring again to the subject of their late conversation. But she did not forget it, and it bore fruit. Mrs. Gray noted, without seeming to be on the watch, the efforts which Candace thenceforward made to overcome her shyness. She saw her force herself to come forward, force herself to smile, to speak, when all the time she was quaking inwardly; and she felt that there was real power of character required for such an effort. Quiet Candace would always be; modest and retiring it was her nature to be: but gradually she learned not to seem cold and stiff; and when her cousin saw her, as she sometimes did, forgetting herself in talking to some one, and lighting up into her easy, natural, bright manner, she felt that the rather hard lesson administered that afternoon on the ocean drive had not been in vain. Rome was not built in a day, and ease of manner is not acquired in a moment; but Candace had at last got hold of a right idea, and there was hope that with time people less charitable even than "perfect angels" might pronounce her "agreeable."



CHAPTER VII.

TWO PICNICS.

IT was while Candace was still doing battle with her shyness, sometimes getting the better of it and then again yielding and letting it get the better of her, that Georgie and Gertrude sent out invitations to another luncheon party of girls. It was the third they had given since coming to Newport. Mrs. Gray certainly did a great deal for the pleasure of her daughters, although Berenice Joy did consider her so "strict."

Candace had her share in this entertainment, as one of the three young ladies of the house. The party was mainly composed of the "Early Dippers," who were not as formidable to her imagination as entire strangers would have been. She and Georgie and Gertrude wore their white woollen dresses, which were almost exactly alike, and "looked like triplets," as Marian rather spitefully observed. Marian herself was not asked to the party, and was out of humor in consequence. Her crossness did not extend to Candace, however. She evinced this by coming in just as Candace had finished dressing, with a long-stemmed pink rose in her hand, which she pinned on the shoulder of the white gown, just under Candace's cheek.

"That looks sweet," remarked Marian. "I am really quite pleased at your appearance; you're every bit as pretty as Gertrude, and heaps better looking than that old Georgie, who wouldn't let me come to her party. Now, take my advice: hold your head up, and don't let any of the girls bully you. If Berry Joy tries it, sit down hard on her."

"I don't know how to sit down hard," laughed Candace; but she kissed Marian for the sweet rose, and went downstairs feeling quite brave. Marian watched her over the balusters; made a face at Berry Joy, who was just sailing into the drawing-room; shook her dimpled fist at Georgie's back, visible through the open door; and then went to sit with her mother, who also was "not invited."

There is no prettier entertainment than a lunch-party of girls. The flowers, the confections, all the graceful little fripperies of the feast, seem to suit with the bright young faces, to whom daylight is a becoming and not a dangerous test. Frederic had taken great pains in ornamenting the table for his young ladies. There was a nosegay for each guest, and no two nosegays were alike. One was made up of roses and daisies, another of roses and heliotrope, another of roses and violets; and each was tied with a satin ribbon of corresponding color, which had the name of the girl for whom it was intended, and the date, painted in gold letters on the ends. In the middle of the table stood a large square pan of glass, in which floated a mass of waterlilies, pink and white; and winding in and out among the little dishes of crystallized fruits, eclairs, apricots, and hot-house grapes, was a continuous curving wreath of pansies of every color. It appeared to lie directly on the white tablecloth; but the stems of the flowers were really set in shallow semi-circles of tin, not over half an inch high, which were filled with wet sand.

For the more substantial part of the meal appeared a succession of appetizing little dishes, hot and perfectly served; and the wind-up of the whole was, of course, unlimited ice-cream and water-ices, those national delicacies dear equally to the heart of every American girl the country over, whether she consumes her saucer-full in uppermost Maine or southernmost Florida.

Luncheon over, the party went out to the piazza, where coffee was served; and then Berry Joy began to tell of a picnic at Southwick's grove which she had attended the day before. None of the other girls had, as it happened, been present; so she had the field of narrative to herself.

"It was perfectly splendid," she said. "There were five coaches with four ladies and a lot of men in each, and ever so many other carriages. We made a sort of procession down the Island. I went in Lawrence Jones's coach, with Sue Tucker and Maude and Mrs. Freddy. You should have seen the country people rush out to look at us when all the horns blew at once. I tell you it was exciting."

"And what did you do after you got to the grove?"

"Oh, we had the most wonderful spread that ever was seen. You know, everybody takes a dish and a bottle of wine to these picnics; and there is always a great competition as to who shall bring the best things. I never saw such a luncheon in my life; everything was perfectly delicious."

"But what did you do?"

"Do? Why, we didn't do anything but that. There was no time for anything else. It took ever so long to get lunch ready. Some of the things had to be cooked after we got there, you know, and the coffee and the mayonnaise made. The servants lit fires and fussed about, and the rest of us sat round and talked a little; but I was so ravenous that I couldn't think of anything but lunch, and I rather think the others were in the same condition. Then, as soon as we had done, it was time to start for home."

"What do you think that horrid Mr. Deane said?" she continued, after a short pause. "You know, he's always trying to be satirical. Some one was saying something about the grove's being such a nice place for picnics, and Mr. Deane interrupted, in that disagreeable dry way of his which some people call funny: 'Well, yes, perhaps so; but in my opinion the proper place for a picnic of this kind is—a gorge!'"

There was a universal giggle.

"How did he dare?" observed Julia Prime.

"Oh, he dares to say just what he likes. He doesn't mind anybody. But I know one thing, and that is that Gorham Allerton didn't like it a bit. He looked absolutely black, and I saw him talking to Mrs. Jackson Tainter about it afterward; and I'll wager something handsome that old Deane will find himself left out of the next picnic. I'm sure, if he does, it will only serve him right for being so rude."

"I don't believe he'll mind it if he isn't invited," remarked Gertrude. "He dined with papa last night; and I heard him say that it was the dullest affair he ever was at in his life, and only fit for the 'companions of Ulysses.'"

"What did he mean?"

"I don't know. Something about General Grant, I suppose.—Candace, what are you laughing at?"

"Oh, nothing," said Cannie, composing her face as well as she could. A little old translation of the Odyssey had been among the books in the North Tolland library, and she was more "up" in the "companions of Ulysses" than the rest of the party.

"How different picnics now-a-days are from those which we used to have in Newport when I was a girl," remarked Mrs. Gray from the drawing-room window, where she had been standing unperceived for a moment or two.

"Oh, Mrs. Gray, are you there?" and the girls hastened to the window. Some of them kissed her; and all, except perhaps Berry Joy, looked glad to see her, for she was a general favorite with her daughters' friends.

"Tell us about the picnics you used to have when you were young," said Julia Prime, balancing herself on the window-sill and keeping fast hold of Mrs. Gray's hand.

"There is not much to tell, Julia. They would seem tame affairs enough to you modern young people, I suppose. We hadn't any men with us as a general thing, except an occasional brother or cousin, and we didn't carry half as much to eat as seems to be considered necessary now-a-days. Then we did all the work ourselves instead of taking cooks and footmen to do it for us; but for all that, we thought them most delightful. For one thing, we always went to some really interesting place, such as the Glen, or the Dumpling Rocks, or the Paradise Valleys."

"Where are the Paradise Valleys?" inquired Julia.

"Oh, I know what they are," said Maud Hallett. "They are lovely places hidden in behind Bishop Berkeley's Rock. I went there once with Aunt Edith. She knows all the nooks and corners of Newport better than anybody else."

"Mamma, you must take us there some day," said Georgie.

"Oh, do, and let me go with you," pleaded Maud. "I should like so much to see them again."

"Won't you take me too?" said Belle Jeffrys.

"We should all like to go," remarked Julia, slyly. "Oh, Mrs. Gray, dear, I have such a lovely idea! Give us a picnic yourself, one of the nice old-fashioned sort that you used to have when you were young, in the Paradise Valley; won't you, dear Mrs. Gray? Oh, do!"

"You needn't coax so hard, Julia; I'm very easy to persuade when I like to do a thing," said Mrs. Gray, with a laugh. "I'll give you a picnic with pleasure; only I must make one stipulation, that it shall be exclusively a girl-party. I don't think the young men of the present day would enjoy the kind of thing I mean, or know what to make of it."

"Girls!" cried Julia, "just listen to what this dear angel says! She's going to take us to Paradise Valley, all by ourselves, with no men to bother and distract our attention.—Men are out of place in Paradise anyway; just think how Adam behaved! (this in a parenthesis).—It is to be a real old-fashioned "goloptious" picnic. Now, who would like to go besides myself?"

"I, I, I," cried the girls, with gratifying unanimity.

"Now, what day shall it be?" continued Julia. "Let's make Mrs. Gray settle the time at once, and then she can't back out."

"I don't want to back out," said Mrs. Gray. "I enjoy the idea as much as you do."

So, after some comparing of engagements, the next Thursday was fixed upon.

"You had better make this the rendezvous," said the giver of the picnic. "I shall have room for one girl in my wagonette besides my four. You must all wear something stout, which won't spoil with scrambling over rocks, and you need not bring any luncheon-baskets. I will see to all that. This is to be an old-fashioned picnic, you know, and I shall provide exactly the sort of things that we used to take

'When I was young and charming, many years ago.'"

"You are just as charming as you can be now," declared Belle, enthusiastically.

"I do hope there won't be a fog," said Julia Prime, as she walked up the Avenue with the others.

"I sha'n't care if there is," replied Berry. "I must say it sounds to me like a very stupid plan,—no men, and nothing in particular to eat. It's just like Mrs. Gray. Her ideas are so queer, as mamma says."

"I wonder you go if you feel that way about it," retorted Julia.

"I dare say I sha'n't. I have a strong presentiment that on that particular day I shall have a headache."

And Berry did,—a "distracting" headache, as she wrote Georgie over-night. She was the only member of the Early Dip Club who missed the picnic. Headaches are sad but convenient things.

Eleven o'clock brought the girls to the Grays' front door, all ready for their start, in various village carts and victorias. There was a little re-distribution: Georgie and Gertrude fitted in with some of their cronies, and Mrs. Gray took three girls besides Marian and Candace in her wagonette. Frederic and the coachman stowed many small baskets and a heap of wraps into the different rumbles and box seats, and they set forth under the bluest of blue skies. It was a beautiful day, just warm enough and not too warm; for a fragrant wind was blowing softly in from the sea.

They had passed the first beach, which at that hour was black with bathers and by-standers, and had climbed the hill-slope which separates it from the second beach, when Marian suddenly cried, "Mamma, here we are close to Purgatory; can't we stop just a minute and show it to Candace?"

Mrs. Gray looked at her watch.

"Your minute will be at least a quarter of an hour, Marian," she said; "but I think there is time enough. Would any of the rest of you like to go?"

Girls always "want to go." There was a general disembarkation; and Mrs. Gray led the way through a gate and across a rough field which stretched along the top of a line of cliffs, steeper and bolder than those on the Newport Point, and cut here and there into sudden sharp fissures.

The scanty grass, yellow with August sun, was broken everywhere by lumps and boulders of that odd conglomerate which is known by the name of "plum-pudding stone." Golden-rod and the early blue aster were flowering everywhere. A flock of sheep fled at their approach, with a low rushing sound like the wind in boughs.



Candace walked along with the rest, in a little shiver of expectancy. The name of "Purgatory" seemed to her to suggest some terrible sort of place. Presently she saw the girls ahead, as they reached a particular point, diverge sharply to the right with little cries and exclamations; and when she advanced, she found herself on the edge of a chasm deeper and darker than any of those which they had passed. It cut the cliff from its highest point to the sea-level; and the wall-like sides receded toward their base, leaving vaulted hollows beneath, into which the eye could not penetrate. Only the ear caught the sound of thunderous murmurs and strange gurgles and hisses of spray echoing from unseen recesses far underground; and it was easy to imagine that these sounds came from some imprisoned sea-creature, hemmed in by the tide, with no chance of escape, and vexing the air with its groans.

Candace shrank away from the brink with a sensation of affright. "What an awful place!" she said, drawing a long breath. "Do you suppose any one ever fell down there?"

Every member of the party had some tradition of the sort to relate; but none of the stories seemed to rest on a very secure foundation.

"Anybody who did must be killed, I should think. I don't wonder they named it Purgatory," said Marian.

There was a fascination of horror about the spot. The girls lingered and leaned over the brink and turned back, until Mrs. Gray had to call them away; and they were all rather silent as they walked across the field to their carriages. But the impression was soon dispelled; for as they drove down the incline toward the second beach, they came upon an unexpected scene of brilliant and animated life.

The tide and the wind together were bringing ashore quantities of seaweed of the kind used in manuring fields, and all the farmers of the neighborhood had assembled to secure this heaven-planted harvest. The long curves of yellow sands which stretch from the Purgatory rocks to Sacluest Point were alive with people. Teams of mild mouse-colored or white oxen stood harnessed to heavy wagons, ready to drag the seaweed home. Out in the plunging surf men were urging horses seaward, or swimming them toward the shore, with long rake-like implements in their wake, which gathered and bore along masses of the glittering brown and rosy kelp. The splash and foam of the waves, the rearing horses, the cries of the men and of the seagulls, who seemed to resent this intrusion upon their haunts, made a vivid and fascinating picture, which seemed in keeping with the beauty of sea and sky and the freshness of the sun-warmed wind.

Then, passing the beach, the carriages drove along a smooth country road for a short distance, and turned into a narrow lane running up hill, which presently brought them to a small farm-house built on the very edge of a ravine.

"Here we take to our feet," said Mrs. Gray, jumping out of the wagonette.

The farmer and his wife, who seemed to be old acquaintances, came out to speak to her. The baskets were collected, and the carriages sent back to town, with orders to return to the same place at six o'clock.

"Oh, why six? why not stay and go home by moonlight?" urged Julia.

"My dear child, if you were in the habit of reading either the almanac or the heavens, you would know that there will be no moon to-night till after eleven o'clock," said her chaperone. "These roads will be as black as pitch by half-past seven. Now, girls, each of you take your own shawl and one of the baskets, and we will descend into Paradise. It sounds paradoxical, but you shall see."

She led the way down a steep narrow pathway on the hill-side into the valley below. The path was overhung with trees. It was necessary to put the boughs aside here and there; brambles reached from the thicket to catch at the girls' skirts as they went by; but when they had passed these trifling obstacles they found themselves safely on the level floor of a little valley below.

Such a choice little valley! It was enclosed between the line of hill from which they had just descended and another parallel line, whose top was of solid granite and whose base was walled by trees. This double barrier kept off all cold winds, and let the sunshine in from east to west to flood and foster the valley growths. To the east the eye saw only the winding of the leafy glade; the west stood open to the sea, and gave a wide vista of glittering ocean and yellow surf-fringed beach.

The ground was carpeted with the softest grass. Thickets of wild roses showed here and there a late blossom, and other thickets of alders glittered with coral-red berries. Apple-trees loaded with small crimson apples made spots of color on the hill-side. Wild-flowers grew thickly in damp spots, and mosses clustered among the stones. Birds chirped and flew from every bush and tree. All was shaded and peaceful and still. Newport, with its whirl and glitter, seemed immeasurably far away. The Paradise Valley might to all appearance have been hidden in the heart of the Alleghanies, instead of being within three miles of the gayest watering-place in America!

Mrs. Gray, with accustomed feet, led the way straight across the glade to where an old cedar-tree stood commanding the oceanward view, with a square block of stone at its foot.

"This is where we used always to come," she said, in a dreamy voice.

"What a delicious place!" cried Julia; "to think that I should have spent seven summers in Newport and never have seen it before! What shall we do with the baskets, Mrs. Gray, dear?"

"Put them here in the shade, and when you all feel hungry we will open them."

"Hungry! why, I am as hungry as a wolf at this moment. I have a gift at being ravenous. Girls, what do you say? Don't you agree with me that no time is like the present time for lunch? Hold up your hands if you do."

"Very well," said Mrs. Gray, laughing, as every hand flew up. "We will have lunch at once, then; but I warn you that there is a good deal to be done first. There," pointing to a blackened spot against a rock, "is where we always boiled our kettle. If some of you will collect some dry sticks, we will see if the present generation is capable of making a fire. I meanwhile will fetch the water."

She took a bright little copper kettle from one of the baskets, and mounted the hill with elastic footsteps, calling out, as she went,—

"Make haste, and be sure that the sticks are dry."

"I'm not sure that I know a dry stick when I see it," whispered Maud Hallett to Julia; but instinct, as often happens, took the place of experience on this occasion, and Mrs. Gray found quite a respectable pile of fuel awaiting her when she came back with her kettle full of spring water.

"Now I will show you how to swing a pot over the fire," she said; and in three minutes a rustic crane of boughs was constructed, the kettle was hanging from it, and the wood piled artistically underneath. A box of matches appeared from Mrs. Gray's pocket, which; as Marian said, was every bit as good as the "Bag" of the Mother in the "Swiss Family Robinson," and seemed to hold almost as great a variety of useful things. Presently a gay little fire was crackling and snapping against the face of the rock, and adding its smoke to the blackened stains left by those other smokes of long ago. The girls stood about, watching the blaze and listening for the first hiss of the kettle; but Mrs. Gray informed them that there was still work to be done.

"I want some new potatoes to roast, for one thing," she said. "Maud and Georgie, you might run up to the farm and ask Mr. Bacon to send me a few, say eighteen or twenty large ones,—oh, and a couple of dozen fresh eggs."

While they were absent on this errand, the other girls, under Mrs. Gray's direction, unpacked the baskets and arranged their contents on the rock beneath the cedar-tree. Mrs. Gray had taken pains to provide, as far as was possible, the same sort of food which twenty-odd years before it had been customary to take to picnics. Out of one basket came a snow-white table-cloth and napkins; out of another, a chafing-dish, a loaf of home-made brown bread, and a couple of pats of delicious Darlington butter. A third basket revealed a large loaf of "Election Cake," with a thick sugary frosting; a fourth was full of crisp little jumbles, made after an old family recipe and warranted to melt in the mouth. There was a pile of thin, beautifully cut sandwiches; plenty of light-buttered rolls; and a cold fowl, ready carved into portions. By the time that these provisions were unpacked, Maud and Georgie were seen descending the hill at a rapid walk, which, at sight of the festive preparations below, changed to what Julia Prime called "a hungry gallop." By this time exercise and fresh air had made everybody so desperately hungry that it seemed impossible to wait another moment; so, while Mrs. Gray heated the coffee and dropped the large pink potatoes into their bed of embers to roast, the younger members of the party fell to work on the sandwiches, just to take off the fine edge of their appetites till something better was ready.

When the coffee was hot, Mrs. Gray seated herself by the rock, lit the lamp under her chafing-dish, dropped in a bit of butter, sprinkled with pepper and salt, and proceeded to "scramble" a great dish of eggs. Did any of you ever eat hot scrambled eggs under a tree when you were furiously hungry? If not, you can form no idea of the pleasure which the "Early Dippers" took in theirs. But it was not the eggs only; it was everything: never was a luncheon so delicious, the girls protested. New potatoes roasted in the ashes were a feast for the gods; and as for the grandmother's cake with which the repast wound up, it baffled analysis and description.

Mrs. Gray had made this cake with her own hands, "in order to carry out the historic verities," as she said. It used to be part of the religion of New England, especially of Connecticut, she explained; and she told them how once, when she was a girl, making a visit to an old aunt in Wethersfield, she had sat up nearly all night over a "raising" of Election cake.

"But why did you do that?" asked the girls.

"Well, you see, my aunt had a sudden attack of rheumatism in her arm. She was going to have the sewing-society meet at her house; and such a thing as a sewing-society without Election cake was not to be dreamed of. So I offered to make it; and I was bound that it should be good. The peculiarity of this particular cake is that it must rise twice before it is baked. You mix half the butter and sugar, and so on, with the yeast; and when that is light, you put in the other half. Now, my first half refused to rise."